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Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earning Data

Author

Listed:
  • Dale, Stacy

    (Mathematica Policy Research)

  • Krueger, Alan B.

    (Princeton University)

Abstract
We estimate the monetary return to attending a highly selective college using the College and Beyond (C&B) Survey linked to Detailed Earnings Records from the Social Security Administration (SSA). This paper extends earlier work by Dale and Krueger (2002) that examined the relationship between the college that students attended in 1976 and the earnings they self-reported reported in 1995 on the C&B follow-up survey. In this analysis, we use administrative earnings data to estimate the return to various measures of college selectivity for a more recent cohort of students: those who entered college in 1989. We also estimate the return to college selectivity for the 1976 cohort of students, but over a longer time horizon (from 1983 through 2007) using administrative data. We find that the return to college selectivity is sizeable for both cohorts in regression models that control for variables commonly observed by researchers, such as student high school GPA and SAT scores. However, when we adjust for unobserved student ability by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to, our estimates of the return to college selectivity fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero. There were notable exceptions for certain subgroups. For black and Hispanic students and for students who come from less-educated families (in terms of their parents’ education), the estimates of the return to college selectivity remain large, even in models that adjust for unobserved student characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Dale, Stacy & Krueger, Alan B., 2011. "Estimating the Return to College Selectivity over the Career Using Administrative Earning Data," IZA Discussion Papers 5533, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5533
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Behrman, Jere R & Rosenzweig, Mark R & Taubman, Paul, 1996. "College Choice and Wages: Estimates Using Data on Female Twins," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 78(4), pages 672-685, November.
    2. Roland G. Fryer & Michael Greenstone, 2010. "The Changing Consequences of Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 116-148, January.
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    6. Angrist, Joshua D. & Krueger, Alan B., 1999. "Empirical strategies in labor economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1277-1366, Elsevier.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    return to higher education; college quality; payoff to college selectivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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