At an annual cost of roughly $7 billion nationally, remedial coursework is one of the single largest interventions intended to improve outcomes for underprepared college students. But like a costly medical treatment with non-trivial side effects, the value of remediation overall depends upon...

One justification for public support of higher education is that prospective students, particularly those from underprivileged groups, lack complete information about the costs and benefits of a college degree. Beyond financial considerations, students may also lack information about what they...

Recent cohorts of college enrollees are more likely to work, and work substantially more, than those of the past. October CPS data reveal that average labor supply among 18 to 22-year-old full-time undergraduates nearly doubled between 1970 and 2000, rising from 6 hours to 11 hours per week. In...

Displaced workers suffer large and persistent earnings losses. These losses can be mitigated by returning to school, yet the extent to which such workers enroll in post-secondary education in response to displacement is poorly understood. Using employer-employee-student matched administrative...

We use employer-employee matched administrative data from Ohio to study the role of firm pay premiums in explaining the large, persistent earnings losses of displaced workers. We estimate that earnings for displaced workers from the mid-2000s are depressed by 22 percent after four years,...

In 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY) launched a new program-- Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE)--aimed at improving college graduation rates. A randomized-control evaluation of the program found a nearly 12 percentage point increase in graduation five years after college entry....

Policymakers at the state and federal level are increasingly pushing to hold institutions accountable for the labor market outcomes of their students. There is no consensus, however, on how such measures should be constructed, or how the choice of measure may affect the resulting institutional...

College attendance is a risky investment. But students may not recognize when they are at risk for failure, and financial aid introduces the possibility for moral hazard. Academic performance standards can serve three roles in this context: signaling expectations for success, providing...

Prior research has demonstrated that financial aid can influence both college enrollments and completions, but less is known about its post-college consequences. Even for students whose attainment is unaffected, financial aid may affect post-college outcomes via reductions in both time to degree...

National efforts to promote college enrollment are increasingly delivered through tax-based assistance, including tax credits and deductions for tuition and fees, tax-advantaged college savings plans, and student loan interest deductions. This paper outlines the main tax-based student aid...