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...

This paper presents an independent large-scale experimental evaluation of two online goal-setting interventions. Both interventions are based on promising findings from the field of social psychology. Approximately 1,400 first-year undergraduate students at a large Canadian university were...

Students from 4-year colleges often arrive having already done very well in high school, but by the end of first term, a wide dispersion of performance emerges, with an especially large lower tail. Students that do well in first year (we call the top 10 percent Thrivers) tend to continue to do...

The standard neo-classical model of wage setting predicts short-term effects of temporary labor market shocks on careers and low costs of recessions for both more and less advantaged workers. In contrast, a vast range of alternative career models based on frictions in the labor market suggests...

We evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first and second-year college students on a Canadian commuter campus. The award scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by...

High school students from disadvantaged high schools in Toronto were invited to take two surveys, about three weeks apart. Half of the students taking the first survey were also shown a 3 minute video about the benefits of post secondary education (PSE) and invited to try out a financial-aid...

Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. This project examines the effects of two experimental treatments designed to test of the importance of...

Recent stories of soaring student debt levels and under-placed college graduates have caused some to question whether a college education is still a sound investment. In this paper, we review the literature on the returns to higher education in an attempt to determine who benefits from college....