Access to Four-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion

Joshua Goodman (), Michael Hurwitz and Jonathan Smith

Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar

Abstract: Does access to four-year colleges affect degree completion for students who would otherwise attend two-year colleges? Admission to Georgia?s four-year public sector requires minimum SAT scores. Regression discontinuity estimates show that access to this sector increases four-year college enrollment and college quality, largely by diverting students from two-year colleges. Access substantially increases bachelor?s degree completion rates for these relatively low-skilled students. SAT retaking behavior suggests students value access to four-year public colleges, though perhaps less than they should. Our results imply that absolute college quality matters more than match quality and suggest potential unintended consequences of free community college proposals.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagoodman/node/175226

Related works:
Working Paper: Access to Four-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion (2015)
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:qsh:wpaper:175226

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard Brandon ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).