Determinants of College Completion: School Quality or Student Ability?

Audrey L. Light · Wayne Strayer

299 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Human Resources

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Higher Education Research Studies School Choice and Performance Educational Outcomes and Influences

Abstract

We investigate whether the "match" between student ability and college quality is an important determinant of college graduation rates. We jointly estimate a multinomial probit model of college attendance decisions in which the alternatives are no college and attendance at college in four quality categories, and a binomial probit model of subsequent graduation decisions. By allowing the error terms to be correlated across alternatives and time periods, we identify the effects of observed factors net of their correlation with unobservables. We find that students of all ability levels have higher chances of graduating if the quality level of their college "matches" their observed skill level.

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References

1941Department of Labor 1977Estimating the Returns to Schooling: Some Econometric Problems 1978Education and Self-Selection 1983College Choice in America 1994Estimates of the Economic Returns to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins 1992Estimates of the Economic Return to Schooling from a New Sample of Twins 1994Earnings, Schooling, and Ability Revisited 1991The Nonequivalence of High School Equivalents

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