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Recently Published Work 

Competing for Bachelor’s Degrees: Are Community Colleges Cutting into the Market Share of Four-Year Institutions

American Educational Research Journal (2020)

To address local workforce needs and expand access to affordable bachelor’s degrees, some states allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degree programs. Despite concerns that community college baccalaureate (CCB) programs will duplicate efforts and cut into the market share of nearby 4-year institutions, extant literature has yet to examine the impact of CCB adoption on bachelor’s degree program enrollment and bachelor’s degree production at 4-year institutions. Using program-level data, our findings show that local CCB degree programs have a negative effect on overall bachelor’s degree enrollment and bachelor’s degree production at 4-year institutions, but this effect is concentrated primarily within for-profit 4-year institutions. This study represents the first comprehensive evaluation of the impact of CCB degree programs on neighboring 4-year institutions.

Link to Article 

CPRE Knowledge Hub Podcast

The Impact of No-Loan Program Participation on the Likelihood of Graduate School Enrollment among Low-Income, First-Generation Students

Forthcoming: Education Finance and Policy

Recent evidence shows that low-income and first-generation college students are less likely to obtain the benefits associated with attending graduate school. No-loan programs are typically administered through institutional grants and designed to increase access to the benefits of higher education among students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, but we know very little about the influence of no-loan programs after students enroll and eventually graduate from college. This study examines the impact of no-loan program participation on graduate school enrollment by leveraging a novel institutional data set and employing regression discontinuity, difference-in-differences, and propensity score weighting approaches. Results indicate a positive and relatively consistent effect of no-loan program participation on graduate school enrollment among low-income and first-generation students.

Link to Article (forthcoming)

High School Students’ with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Perceptions of School Climate

Journal of Disability Policy Studies

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs), particularly those in high school, present myriad challenges for educators. Although research suggests that students with EBDs experience schooling differently than their peers, few studies have examined differences in perceptions of school climate. School climate is a multidimensional construct consisting of students’ perceptions of physical and social school environments. To address this gap, we leveraged school climate data from more than 350,000 high school students, including more than 5,000 with or at risk for EBDs, in Georgia. We estimated a series of multilevel models and found that students with or at risk for EBDs consistently report more negative perceptions of school climate than their peers across all school climate domains. We also examined whether individualized education program (IEP) services affected perceptions for students with EBDs, finding more positive perceptions for some domains for students with IEP services for EBDs compared with students with EBDs, but no IEP services. Implications and limitations are then discussed.

Link to Article

Informational Disclosure and College Choice

Brookings Institution Event: Accountability in higher education: Using evidence to inform regulatory policy.

September 8, 2020

Link to Working Paper 

Link to Event Recording 

Previously Published Work

Student- and School-Level Predictors of High School Students’ Perceptions of School Climate

The Journal of Child and Adolescent Counseling

Link to Article 

The Impact of Community College Baccalaureate Adoption on Associate Degree Production

Teachers College Record

Link to Article

A HOPE for Study Abroad: The impact of merit-aid policy adoption on study abroad participation in Tennessee

Educational Policy

Link to Article

Growing the Pie? The Effect of Responsibility Center Management on Tuition Revenue.

Journal of Higher Education

Link to Working Paper 

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