Wisconsin Act 95, signed into law in February 2024, newly guarantees students who graduate in the top 5% of their high school class admission to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This Top Percent Policy differs from previously studied policies along a number of important dimensions: UW–Madison is the single state flagship in Wisconsin, admits large numbers of students from states not treated by this admissions guarantee, and is requiring students in the top 5% of their class to submit applications by the early action deadline to receive the admissions guarantee. This paper uses admissions records from the University of Wisconsin–Madison to study the policy's statewide effects on flagship application and enrollment behavior.

School districts identify over 1 million students a year as homeless, but schools’ measure of homelessness does not capture all students facing housing instability. This study uses administrative data from Wisconsin to identify unstably-housed students through their enrollments in homeless shelters or services in the state’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). This data is linked with administrative education records, including daily suspension records, enabling a study of the association between HMIS enrollments and suspension from school. Using both regression analysis with event time and a linear probability model, this study documents that unstably-housed students are 1.5 times as likely to be suspended from school on the HMIS enrollment date relative to their probability of suspension on other school days. Policymakers and school leaders can use this information to inform how they support students who are experiencing housing instability, increasing support when a student experiences specific events of instability or transition. 

I ask the question How does a college’s local labor market strength causally affect its graduates’ post-college earnings? Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, I modify an approach from Dale and Krueger (2002) that uses individuals’ college application portfolios to identify students whose college location is as good as randomly assigned, allowing me to estimate a causal effect of an individual's college labor market strength on their post-college earnings. I find that a college’s local labor market strength, measured using earnings for workers with bachelor’s degrees in the college’s commuting zone, positively affects post-college earnings. I explore mechanisms of this effect and find that the college’s local labor market strength is highly correlated with the post-college working location’s labor market strength, fully mediating the causal effect of interest. I am not able to claim that the impact on earnings is more than a cost of living adjustment. My findings suggest that a college’s local labor market plays an important role in the transition from college to the labor market.