Working papers

Abstract. There is concern that licensure requirements impede mobility of licensed professionals to areas of high demand. Nursing has not been immune to this criticism, especially in the context of perceived nurse shortages and large expected future demand. The Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) was introduced to solve this problem by permitting registered nurses to practice across state lines without obtaining additional licensure. We exploit the staggered adoption of the NLC to examine whether a reduction in licensure-induced barriers alters the nurse labor market. Using data on over 1.8 million nurses and other health care workers we find no evidence that the labor supply or mobility of nurses increases following the adoption of the NLC, even among the residents of counties bordering other NLC states who are potentially most affected by the NLC. This suggests that nationalizing occupational licensing will not substantially reduce labor market frictions.

NBER Working Paper 22344

Abstract. How does postsecondary human capital investment respond to changes in labor market skill demand? We quantify the magnitude and nature of this response in the U.S. 4-year sector. To do so, we develop a new measure of institution-major-specific labor demand, and corresponding shift-share instrument, that combines job ads with alumni locations. We find that postsecondary human capital investments meaningfully respond. We estimate elasticities for degrees and credits centered around 1.3, generally increasing with time horizon. We provide evidence that both student demand and institutional supply-side constraints matter. Our findings illuminate the nature of educational production in higher education.

Upjohn Working Paper   NBER Working Paper 31572

Abstract. Students’ postsecondary course-taking is of interest to researchers, yet has been difficult to study at large scale because administrative transcript data are rarely standardized across institutions or state systems. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing to standardize college transcripts at scale. We demonstrate the approach’s utility by showing how the disciplinary orientation of students’ courses and majors align and diverge at 18 diverse four-year institutions in the College and Beyond II dataset. Our findings complicate narratives that student participation in the liberal arts is in great decline. Both professional and liberal arts majors enroll in a large amount of liberal arts coursework, and in three of the four core liberal arts disciplines, the share of course-taking in those fields is meaningfully higher than the share of majors in those fields. To advance the study of student postsecondary pathways, we release the classification models for public use. 

Annenberg Working Paper: 24-1042

Abstract. Community colleges potentially offer a cost-effective path to earning a bachelor’s degree, though this path is bumpy for many students. This paper investigates how transfer pathways could be improved, with a focus on the role of specific institutions.  We study the universe of all new undergraduates in the U.S. that receive Federal student aid tracked across all institutions for eight years.  We first find that BA aspirants that start at a community college are 21.6 percentage points less likely to earn a BA within eight years of first enrolling than similar students who start directly at a public four-year college, though they accumulate $3,400 less loan debt to do so. Community college thus offers a lower cost, but less certain path to BA completion. We then use the large number of cross-institution transfers occurring in the US student population to identify the contribution of individual institutions to these patterns while also controlling for unobserved student factors by estimating a student and institution fixed effects model. We find substantial variation in the estimated impacts of enrolling at individual institutions on students’ persistence and debt accumulation; however, the difference in persistence effects between the public two- and four-year sectors is insufficient to explain the entirety of gap in their BA completion rates. Increasing all two-years’ persistence effects by 1 standard deviation would only increase the BA completion rate by 3.8 percentage points. We conclude that feasible improvements in individual community colleges’ ability to get students to persist, in isolation, are unlikely to bring meaningful pathway improvement. Rather, the creation of stronger and more effective pathways between specific two- and four-year institutions is likely to generate greater increases in BA degree attainment.

Currently under review. Link coming soon.

Abstract. Gender and racial/ethnic gaps in labor market earnings remain large, even among college-goers. Cross-gender and race/ethnic differences in choice of and returns to college major are potentially important contributors. Following Texas public high school graduates for up to 20 years through college and the labor market, we assess gender and racial differences in college major choices and the consequences of these choices. Women and underrepresented minorities are less likely than men, Whites, and Asians to major in high earning fields like business, economics, engineering, and computer science, however we also show that they experience lower returns to these majors. Differences in major-specific returns relative to liberal arts explain about one quarter of the gender, White-Black, and White-Hispanic (but not White-Asian) earnings gaps among four-year college students and become larger contributors to earnings gaps than major choice as workers age. Quantile treatment effect estimates show that lower returns are not simply a reflection of inequality at the top of the earnings distribution but rather appear throughout the distribution. We present suggestive evidence that differences in occupation choices within field are a key driver of the differences in returns across groups. The work shines light on the roles that college major choice and returns by gender and race contribute to inequality. JEL Codes: I26, I23, J24

Working Paper July 2025.

Abstract. In the United States, social welfare programs often have low take-up, where only a fraction of eligible beneficiaries receive the resources that they are eligible for. We examine this problem through the lens of Michigan’s Tuition Incentive Program (TIP), a state grant aid program that provides free community college to low-income students based on their childhood participation in Medicaid. To investigate TIP take-up, we conduct a large-scale mixed-methods study using comprehensive data on over one million Michigan public school students over 11 cohorts, and 55 interviews with program administrators, high school counselors, and financial aid staff. We find that while one third of Michigan high school graduates are eligible for TIP, its take-up rate is only 14 percent, limiting its impact on college affordability. Our results show that TIP take-up is higher for students who have early and consistent Medicaid enrollment, and for students in schools with a high proportion of TIP-eligible students. We identify key barriers that play a significant role in shaping take-up: the presence of administrative burdens, and the constraints faced by front-line administrators in alleviating these burdens when administrative responsibility for grant aid is fractured and ill-defined. Other safety net programs could experience similar challenges.

Under review. Link coming soon.

Abstract. Arguments crediting liberal education with preparing college students for life, work, and citizenship are plentiful. However, questions remain about the extent to which diverse students in the U.S. receive a liberal education. We examine the degree to which students from various majors and demographic groups receive a liberal education by quantifying the breadth and depth of their course-taking. We find that students’ majors are a substantial driver of differences in exposure to liberal education, but demographics are not. Although one might expect liberal arts majors to have the greatest exposure to curricular breadth, that is not necessarily the case. These findings lay the foundation for research examining the long-term consequences of liberal education on a range of outcomes.

Under review. Link coming soon.