The Benefits of Alternatives to Conventional College: Comparing the Labor-Market Returns to For-Profit Schools and Community Colleges

Christopher Jepsen, Peter Mueser, Kenneth Troske and Kyung-Seong Jeon ()
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Kyung-Seong Jeon: University of Missouri

No 2407, Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Missouri

Abstract: This paper provides novel evidence on the labor-market returns to for-profit postsecondary school and community college attendance. We link administrative records on college attendance with quarterly earnings data for nearly 400,000 students in one state. Five years after enrollment, quarterly earnings conditional on employment exceed earnings in the absence of schooling by 20-29 percent for students attending for-profit schools and 16-27 percent for students attending community colleges. In aggregate, the benefits of attendance generally exceed the costs in both for-profit schools and community colleges. Our analyses suggest the two types of schools serve very different markets, both in terms of the characteristics of students and the fields they study. When we perform matching analyses with comparable students in comparable fields, we do not find that returns are consistently higher in for-profit schools or community colleges.

Keywords: postsecondary education; labor-market returns; for-profit schools (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 78 pgs.
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-lma and nep-ure
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Working Paper: The Benefits of Alternatives to Conventional College: Comparing the Labor-Market Returns to For-Profit Schools and Community Colleges (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:umc:wpaper:2407

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