Using data for 2008/09, we update a 2001/02 study that examined the pricing policies with respect to family income at highly selective private colleges and universities and the distribution of students by family income at these schools. We find significant reductions in net prices relative to...

This note looks at the quality of the information on family income that selective colleges rely on to increase equality of opportunity by recruiting high-ability, low-income students. Individual family income estimates embedded in the College Board’s search parameters are compared, for 635...

Two studies explored the experience and performance of students at Williams College in three-person groups that were homogeneous or heterogeneous in rated academic ability. In accord with hypotheses from Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory, students in academically homogeneous groups...

With only a small number of their students coming from families with the lowest incomes (10% from the bottom two family income quintiles), the nation's most selective private colleges and universities need to know why. Two ready ideological answers are (1) that low-income high-ability students...

In this paper, we present estimates of roommate and institution based peer effects. Using data from the College & Beyond survey, the Freshman survey, and phonebook data that allows us to identify college roommates - we estimate models of students' political persuasion and intellectual...

Using Mellon Foundation's College and Beyond survey of alumni from 34 colleges and universities spanning 40 years, Clotfelter found that those who reported that someone "... besides students [took] a special interest in you or your work" also reported greater general satisfaction with their...

College tuition, as the price of higher education services, defies familiar economic analysis in important ways. It is recognized that tuition is a price that covers only a fraction of the cost of producing those educational services (about a third, nationally), creating an in-kind subsidy for...

This paper was prepared as a chapter for College Decisions: How Students Actually Make Them and How They Could, edited by Caroline Hoxby for publication by the University of Chicago Press for the NBER. In this chapter, we describe the potential significance of student peer effects for the...

Working from the financial aid records of individual students at 28 highly selective private colleges and universities, we were able to calculate both the price the low-income students at these schools actually pay for a year’s education,net of financial aid grants, and how the schools...