College Quality and Attendance Patterns: A Long-Run View
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 13,
no. 1, January 2021
(pp. 184-215)
Abstract
We construct a time series of college attendance patterns for the United States and document a reversal: family background was a better predictor of college attendance before World War II, but academic ability was afterward. We construct a model of college choice that explains this reversal. The model's central mechanism is that an exogenous surge of college attendance leads better colleges to be oversubscribed, institute selective admissions, and raise their quality relative to their peers, as in Hoxby (2009). Rising quality at better colleges attracts high-ability students, while falling quality at the remaining colleges dissuades low-ability students, generating the reversal.Citation
Hendricks, Lutz, Christopher Herrington, and Todd Schoellman. 2021. "College Quality and Attendance Patterns: A Long-Run View." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 13 (1): 184-215. DOI: 10.1257/mac.20190154Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- N32 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: U.S.; Canada: 1913-
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