Job Market Paper
College Before College: How Dual Credit Shapes Educational Trajectories
This paper examines how early exposure to college coursework affects the educational trajectories of students at the margin of college readiness. I exploit a Texas policy that links eligibility for dual credit coursework to a cutoff on the STAAR English II exam, using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and linked administrative education and earnings records. Crossing the eligibility threshold increases dual credit participation by approximately 3.7 percentage points. I find that eligibility reduces high-school dropout by 0.3 percentage points, a 17 percent decline relative to the below-cutoff mean. It also shifts students’ college application and admission patterns toward flagship universities, despite little change in overall college enrollment. Estimates for public-university degree completion are positive but imprecise, while early-career earnings are largely unaffected. Together, the results suggest that early college exposure can shape students’ educational persistence and postsecondary choices even when it does not substantially increase college entry.
Working Paper
Credit Pathway and the Labor Market (with Daniel Gómez-Vásquez) [pre-registration]
While the traditional route to a bachelor’s degree in the US typically involves four years of full-time study and the accumulation of 120 credits, a growing share of students have pursued alternative pathways to earn these credits, including dual credit, advanced placement, and community college transfer. In this study, we employ an online resume evaluation experiment to investigate whether these pathways affect employer evaluations even when applicants hold the same degree and whether different pathways have different impacts. Moreover, we also manipulate whether the resume is accompanied by an academic transcript to investigate whether evaluations respond primarily to the presence of a non-traditional pathway or to the specific details of how credits were earned.
Works in Progress
Student Absenteeism and Peer Outcomes (with Suhyeon Oh)
Uses Texas ERC administrative data to examine whether exposure to homeless peers affects classmates' academic achievement, attendance, and engagement through classroom disruptions such as absenteeism.
Closer Colleges, Earlier Credits: The Effects of Dual Credit Access
Exploits geographic variation in proximity to nearby colleges as an instrumental variable to estimate the effects of dual credit access on college enrollment, credit accumulation, and degree completion for a broad population of students.
Fracking the Future: The Long-run Implication of Urban Fracking on Student’s Academic Performance (wtih KT Cho)
Examines the relationship between fracking activity and educational outcomes in Texas.
Pre-doctoral Work
Linking quality of government to outcomes of civil service training: evidence from southeast asian countries (with Hyeon-Suk Lyu, Tae Hyung Kim, and M. Jae Moon) Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2022 [link]