THE EFFECT OF SELECTIVE PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY ENROLLMENT: EVIDENCE FROM CALIFORNIA

Zachary Bleemer ()

University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley

Abstract: What are the benefits and costs of attending a selective public research university instead of a less-selective university or college?This study examines the 2001-2011 Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) program, which guaranteed University of Californiaadmission to students in the top four percent of California high school classes. Employing a regression discontinuity design, Iestimate that ELC pulled 8 percent of marginally-admitted students into four "Absorbing'' UC campuses from less-competitivepublic institutions in California. Those ELC compliers had lower SAT scores and family incomes than their eventual peers; almosthalf were under-represented minorities (URM), and 65 percent came from the state's bottom SAT quartile of high schools.Nevertheless, marginally eligible students became more than 20 percentage points more likely to earn a university degree within5 years, though URM and less-prepared students became less likely to earn STEM degrees. Students' net expected earningsconditional on university completion, major, and gender substantially increased across subgroups, and linked state employmentrecords suggest an increase in URM students' average early-career earnings.

Keywords: Education; Returns to Education; University Selectivity; Heterogeneous Student Outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/2b22k86h.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Selective Public Research University Enrollment: Evidence from California (2018)
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:cdl:cshedu:qt2b22k86h

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education from Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().