What Limits College Success? A Review and Further Analysis of Holzer and Baum's 'Making College Work'

Philip Oreopoulos

No 150, IZA Policy Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Holzer and Baum's recent book, 'Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students,' provides an excellent up-to-date review of higher education. My review first summarizes its key themes: 1) who gains from college and why? 2) mismatch and the need for more structure; 3) problems with remediation; 4) financial barriers and 5) the promise of comprehensive support. I then critique the book's proposed solutions using some of my own qualitative and quantitative data. Some recommendations are worth considering, while others are too expensive or unlikely to make a meaningful difference without addressing the underlying lack of preparedness and motivation of college students. I argue that making mandatory some existing services, such as application assistance and advice, proactive tutoring and advising, and greater career transition support, has the most immediate potential.

Keywords: college student achievement; returns to college; higher education policy; signaling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2019-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/pp150.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What Limits College Success? A Review and Further Analysis of Holzer and Baum's Making College Work (2021)
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:iza:izapps:pp150

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Policy Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().