Population Externalities and Optimal Social Policy

If fertility is not chosen in a socially optimal way, and if policies to directly target fertility are ineffective or politically infeasible, then public policies that affect fertility could have important welfare consequences through the fertility channel. We refer to these effects as population externalities, and in this paper we focus on one important variable that may have a causal impact on fertility: the education of potential parents. If increased education causes families to have fewer children, then a government would want to increase college tuition subsidies in the presence of environmental externalities such as climate change, to indirectly discourage families from having children who will generate future environmental costs. Alternatively, if fertility is inefficiently low, due to imperfect parental altruism for example, governments will want to lower tuition subsidies to encourage child-bearing. We present a simple model of the college enrollment decision and its fertility impacts, and show that such population externalities are quantitatively important: the optimal subsidy increases by about $5000 per year with climate change, and decreases by over $7000 per year with imperfect parental altruism. Our paper demonstrates how public economics can incorporate population externalities, and that such externalities can have significant impacts on optimal policy.

College Tuition and Income Inequality

This paper evaluates the role of rising income inequality in explaining observed growth in college tuition. We develop a competitive model of the college market, in which college quality depends on instructional expenditure and the average ability of admitted students. An innovative feature of our model is that it allows for a continuous distribution of college quality. We find that observed increases in US income inequality can explain more than half of the observed rise in average net tuition since 1990 and that rising income inequality has also depressed college attendance. (JEL D31, I22, I23, I24)

US community colleges see enrollment drop this year

Significance President Joe Biden included free community college tuition for all students in his original infrastructure spending bill, and falling numbers have bolstered efforts to link community college access to equity and justice, rather than just education and employment. Impacts Attracting new faculty with recent industry expertise to community colleges will require investment in teaching how to teach. A volatile labour market will increase the need for lifetime learning, especially for those now in the manual services sector. Two years of post-secondary education will be needed for sustainable employment as employers emphasise skills and credentials.

In-State Tuition Policies and the College Decisions of Undocumented Students: Evidence from Colorado

We study the effects of a decrease in college tuition on college application and enrollment behavior. Specifically, we use student-level data to analyze a Colorado law that granted in-state tuition to undocumented students residing in Colorado. We find an increase in the credit hours and persistence of newly enrolled and likely undocumented students. We do not find evidence of changes in the persistence or credit hours of continuing students. Leveraging application-level data, we show suggestive evidence that the policy induced more students to enroll in college due to an increase in applications, rather than an increase in the acceptance rate or the enrollment rate.

“Name and Shame”: An Effective Strategy for College Tuition Accountability?

Due to concerns about college affordability, in 2011, the Department of Education began producing two annual public lists of institutions with the highest change in tuition and fees and average net price within sector (top 5% and at least US$600 increase). This study investigates the effect of this low-stakes federal accountability tool on institutional behavior. I use a frontier regression discontinuity design that investigates the effect of being included on either the tuition or net price list at the 95th percentile cutoff (restricting the sample to only include institutions with at least a US$600 increase). I find no consistent effect of list inclusion on affordability or enrollment. I also present several robustness checks that also find little consistent effect.

Effects of Reduced Community College Tuition on College Choices and Degree Completion

Recent efforts to increase college access and completion concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policymakers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-term gains in college completion. In this paper, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes to study how community college tuition rates affect students' outcomes across both public and private colleges. By exploiting spatial variation in tuition rates, I find that reducing tuition at a student's local community college by $1,000 increases enrollment at the college by 3.5 percentage points (18%) and reduces enrollment at non-local community colleges, for-profit institutions, and other private, vocationally-focused colleges, by 1.9 percentage points (15%). This shift in enrollment choices increases students' persistence in college, credit completion, and the probability that they transfer to and earn bachelor's degrees from four-year colleges.

Analysis on the Higher Education Sustainability in China Based on the Comparison between Universities in China and America

To find and solve the problems existing in the development of higher education in China, the input–output, scale of higher education, students’ tuition and teachers’ income of Chinese and American universities are compared. The results show that the investment in top universities in China is similar to that in the United States, but the average student budget is much less, and the output is not comparable to that of American universities. The scale of higher education is much larger than that of the United States, and the growth rate is far more than demand. College tuition should be increased, with the absolute tuition only 5.93% of income, and relative tuition is 20.21% of that in the United States. College teachers are underpaid, earning only approximately 20% of what their peers earn in the United States. Therefore, for higher education sustainability, the paper puts forward the development direction of higher education in China, which is to control the expansion scale of colleges and universities, and to increase students’ tuition and teachers’ salary.

ATTITUDES TOWARD PARENTAL FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF YOUNG-ADULT CHILDREN

Studies have shown that Americans do not save enough for retirement because they prioritize providing support of their young-adult children over saving for retirement. Attitudes toward parental support has been largely overlooked in existing literature. Using a factorial vignette experimental design and a sample of 500 Americans of age 40 and older, this study investigated how manipulation of contextual factors changed endorsement of parental support. This study found that endorsement of parental support varied depending on the goal of support, whether it was to purchase a car, pay for school tuition, or to pay for down payment for a house. Thus, 67% of respondents endorsed parental financial assistance with purchasing a car, 44% endorsed down payment for a house, and only 38% endorsed paying for college tuition, reflecting overall social importance of these three elements in becoming an adult person. Gender of the child did not affect endorsement of parental financial support to adult children, indicating that there were no gender specific social expectations of who should receive more support from parents, daughters or sons. The major motives of parental support included (a) desire to be a “good parent” and to take responsibility for the child, (b) expectation that children would eventually pay back their parents, and (c) desire to make sacrifice for own children. Parental support may provide numerous benefits to both children and their parents; however, it is important to educate parents on ways to support their children without threatening their own financial needs in retirement.