Democratization and Diversion: The Effect of Missouri's A+ Schools Program on Postsecondary Enrollment

José Muñoz, James R. Harrington, Bradley R. Curs and Mark Ehlert ()

The Journal of Higher Education, 2016, vol. 87, issue 6, 801-830

Abstract: Recent federal and state education policy has targeted community colleges as an affordable venue to increase postsecondary attainment. We examined a state program aimed at increasing community college enrollment, the Missouri A+ Schools Program, which provided eligible graduates from participating high schools the opportunity to earn a scholarship at a Missouri public two-year college. The Missouri A+ Schools Program aims to increase the democratization of education by providing greater access to attend postsecondary institutions but may simultaneously create a diversion away from four-year colleges. The staggered adoption of the Missouri A+ Schools Program across high schools allowed a quasi-experimental estimation of the effect of the program on postsecondary enrollment. The Missouri A+ Schools Program increased the overall college-going rate by 1.5 percentage points for graduates from A+ designated high schools. Furthermore, the A+ Schools Program increased two-year college-going rates by 5.3 percentage points, and decreased four-year college-going rates by 3.8 percentage points. Overall, the A+ Schools Program provided a democratizing effect by increasing overall postsecondary enrollment, while simultaneously creating a diversionary effect through increased two-year enrollment and a decline in four-year enrollment.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00221546.2016.11780888 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uhejxx:v:87:y:2016:i:6:p:801-830

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uhej20

DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2016.11780888

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Higher Education is currently edited by Mitchell Chang

More articles in The Journal of Higher Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().