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Title: Issues in Higher Education: Finance, Enrollment, and Affirmative Action

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2020

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Abstract: This dissertation adds to our understanding of large-scale issues in higher education. It contributes to existing literature by expanding our knowledge of how universities behave, and the consequences of these actions. It examines how universities respond to cuts to state funding, contributing to our knowledge of the scale and scope of tuition revenue recuperation. It also identifies nonresident crowd-out of resident students, increasing our understanding of how universities adjust their enrollment composition. Finally, it adds to our understanding of how academic interventions targeted at disadvantaged groups can improve their outcomes. In each case, it brings new econometric techniques and tools to answer questions with more certainty than did prior literature. Chapter 1 uses data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to examine how decreased state funding changes tuition and enrollment for resident and nonresident students. I estimate causal impacts by using a shift-share instrumental variables identification strategy. Results show that universities increase resident tuition by 2% and nonresident enrollment by 7% in response to a 10% decrease in state funding. Chapter 2 examines another trend in public higher education: nonresident crowd out of resident students. I create two separate instrumental variables from the IPEDS dataset: the out-of-state student IV creates exogenous cross-state aggregated student flows using past enrollment trends. The foreign IV aggregates foreign student stocks at the state-level before dividing them to schools based on their enrollment size. Results find that every two additional nonresident students crowd out one additional resident. Chapter 3, co-authored with Scott Carrell, quantifies the effectiveness of a preparatory school intervention for less-prepared students. We use United States Air Force Academy data, and instrument for selection into the prep school by leveraging variation in the competitiveness of Congressional Districts to predict likelihood of enrollment in the prep school. We find that the prep school intervention increases first-year grades by over 0.2 grade points, and that these gains persist to graduation.

Url: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2466038987/fulltextPDF/C390B9AFC4342C4PQ/1?accountid=14586

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Authors: Mathias, Max Robert Wiser

Institution: University of California, Davis

Department: Economics

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education

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