Postsecondary Attendance Research Articles

Promoting Postsecondary Education in Low-Income Youth: The Moderating Role of Socio-Behavioral and Academic Skills in the Context of a Major Educational Reform.

Governments around the world are pressed to invest in postsecondary education. However, little research exists to document whether large-scale educational reforms aimed at increasing rates of postsecondary attendance benefit youth's developmental outcomes. This study tested whether an educational reform occurring in Québec, Canada, in the 1960s increased educational levels, and whether it benefitted some youth more than others. In the 1970's, 4109 low-income youth (50% females) aged 7-13 years old were recruited at Time 1 from first, fourth, and seventh grade classes (Mage = 10.6, SD = 2.5). Socio-behavioral characteristics and academic skills at Time 1 were examined as predictors of educational attainment at Time 2, three decades later, on 3883 of the same participants. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine the likelihood of youth obtaining a diploma from the newly created, accessible, and affordable colleges ("cégeps"). Low-educated groups (high school dropouts and high school graduates) presented a higher early risk profile than did college graduates. Interactions revealed that social withdrawal protected youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods, helping them graduate from college. Likeability helped academically weaker girls go beyond college and access university, and helped academically competent boys graduate from college. Aggressive behavior decreased the odds of university attendance for academically competent boys. Policies promoting higher education for disadvantaged youth should be supplemented with early interventions integrating academic and socio-behavioral objectives.

Exploration of the Role of Education in Intergenerational Income Mobility in Canada: Evidence from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults

Canadian children experience a high level of intergenerational income mobility compared with US children. Moreover, their physical and mental health outcomes, school readiness, and post-secondary attendance are all less tightly associated with parental outcomes than in the United States. In this article, we investigate the role played by children’s education in the intergenerational transmission of income in Canada. Existing research has produced macro-level estimates of mobility to draw comparisons over time and across places and has studied the micro-level mechanisms that underlie the relationship between parents’ and children’s outcomes. However, evidence on the extent to which the different factors investigated drive the broader numbers is still limited. To remedy this, we exploit the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults, a rich panel of integrated survey and administrative data covering 1982–2013. We estimate that the education level of children accounts for 40.5–50.1 percent of the correlation between their income and their parents’, similar to the United States. Moreover, we discuss evidence suggesting that the greater mobility of Canadian children is linked not only to their lower returns to education but also to the weaker association between their education and their parents’ income. Finally, we find that almost half of the effect linked to education is associated with the skills respondents use at work, such as reading or communication.

Unequal opportunities and public policy: The impact of parental disability benefits on child postsecondary attendance

AbstractThis paper uses Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine whether greater cash transfers available to parents with disabilities when their child was aged 5 to 15 increase the chances that the child will attend postsecondary education (PSE) as a young adult. We exploit differences across provinces and over time in the generosity of provincial disability benefits programs in Canada and find that higher disability benefits when the child was aged 5 to 15 years increase the probability that he or she will have attended or be attending PSE by age 19 to 25. The estimated effect size increases with the severity of the parental disability and the number of disabled parents. Because lower disability benefits significantly worsen performance of public school aged children on standardized math tests and elevate anxiety symptoms, one plausible pathway from disability benefit levels to PSE attendance may be through the cognitive and non‐cognitive skills children acquire by the age of 15. We conclude that the level of disability transfers available early in a child's life mitigates the impact of having a parent with a disability as a source of inequality of opportunity and of unequal probability of PSE participation.

Understanding the Effects of Rurality and Socioeconomic Status on College Attendance and Institutional Choice in the United States

This study seeks to update past studies of rural youth by examining college attendance and choice decisions for students who graduated from rural high schools, while also conducting an examination of how the effects of socioeconomic status manifest differently by locale. Logistic regression is used to study the postsecondary attendance and institutional choice for rural students. Data are taken from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The results reveal clear differences in postsecondary attendance and initial institutional chose for youth from rural locales. Socioeconomic effects also differ for rural and non-rural youth.

Tracking Health Inequalities from High School to Midlife.

Educational gradients in health status, morbidity, and mortality are well established, but which aspects of schooling produce those gradients is only partially understood. We draw on newly available data from the midlife follow-up of the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort to analyze the relationship between students' level of coursework in high school and their long-term health outcomes. We additionally evaluate the mediating roles of skill development, postsecondary attendance and degree attainment, and occupational characteristics. We find that students who took a medium- to high-level course of study in high school have better self-reported health and physical functioning in midlife, even net of family background, adolescent health, baseline skills, and school characteristics. The association partially operates through pathways into postsecondary education. Our findings have implications for both educational policy and research on the educational gradient in health.

School counseling: Partnering with a school district to provide postsecondary opportunities for first generation, low income, and students of color

AbstractA classroom activity led by district school counselors was conducted in a K‐12 school district to ensure educational equity for students in relation to postsecondary attendance. This took place in a school setting that has a large population of students of color, predominately Latino and African American students, as well as low‐income students. As part of their practicum field experience, university school counseling students were supervised by school counselors at their sites to help provide a readily available and modified curriculum to instruct students about their options related to postsecondary awareness, planning, and attendance, as well as demonstrate career pathways that engender high expectations and college and career readiness. Instruction took place in the classroom as well as in small group settings.

Predicting Postsecondary Attendance by Income in the American States Using Multilevel Regression with Poststratification

In this paper we introduce a novel technique to estimate postsecondary attendance rates by income in 50 states and the District of Columbia. We use parameter estimates based on the federally administered Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 combined with known characteristics of state populations from the American Community Survey in order to estimate postsecondary attendance rates by income in each of the states. Our application of Bayesian techniques for estimation and inference allow us to make appropriate statements of uncertainty regarding our estimates, including the probability that low-income young people will attend higher education in a given state. We find substantial variation in the postsecondary attendance rates of low-income young people, ranging from 34 percent in some states to over 54 percent in others. Our results also provide evidence that the within-state difference between low-income and middle/high-income college attendance rates ranges from 20 to 28 percentage points. Our validity checks show that our estimates follow expected patterns based on estimates from other surveys.

Second Chance for High School Dropouts? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Postsecondary Educational Returns to the GED

We evaluate the educational returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We use fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) methods to account for the fact that GED test-takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it and the fact that test-takers have to pass all five subtests before receiving the GED. We find that the GED increases the likelihood of postsecondary attendance and course completion substantially but that the GED impact on overall credits completed is modest; the GED causes an average increment of only two credits for men and six credits for women.

Social Capital and College-Going Culture in High Schools: the Effects of College Expectations and College Talk on Students' Postsecondary Attendance

Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, we examined the probability of students attending college by taking into account their 10th- and 12th-grade exposure to college expectations from and college-related interactions with school staff. Our results suggest that college expectations and college-related interactions with their school counselors, teachers, and coaches had a modest impact on students' odds of enrolling in college, considering the large impact of taking advanced courses and completing college admissions tests.

Course-Taking Effect on Postsecondary Enrollment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

ABSTRACTData from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 were used to examine the effect of academic and career or technical education course-taking in high school on deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) youth’s postsecondary enrollment in 2-year, 4-year, and career or technical education institutions. We examined the proportion of academic and career or technical education courses taken, completion of algebra, and completion of an occupationally specific course of study. Propensity model analyses indicated that academic course taking significantly increased the odds that DHH students would enroll in postsecondary school. Completion of a higher proportion of career or technical education courses was not related to enrollment in postsecondary education, including career and technical education schools. Implications for practice and future research are discussed, including the importance of secondary transition planning staff both encouraging DHH students who have a goal of future postsecondary attendance to take a rigorous, academically focused high school curriculum, and providing students with the support to complete these courses.

A mixed method study on educational well-being and resilience among youth in foster care

This paper, framed by risk and resiliency theory, presents findings from a youth led collaborative social research study exploring the facilitators of educational success and college attendance among former foster youth. A simultaneous component/parallel process mixed method design was conducted to explore factors associated with educational success among youth in foster care. Findings suggest that stability and positive relationships with peers and adult mentors ease transitions, and reinforce emotional connections impacting educational success and post-secondary attendance. This manuscript attempts to raise the volume on youth's successful experiences of education and highlight the implications for trauma informed practice in child welfare and school settings.

Racial and Ethnic Gaps in Postsecondary Aspirations and Enrollment

One major finding of the Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO) report was that a smaller proportion of African Americans than whites reported “wanting to go no further than high school in each region of the country.” Blacks in the 1960s had high college aspirations, and those aspirations have continued, but today, as then, fewer blacks than whites attend four-year colleges. Since the EEO report, the U.S. population has become increasingly diverse, and postsecondary aspirations and enrollment now vary considerably among racial and ethnic groups. Whereas the EEO report focused on the significant role of students’ concrete knowledge about college in postsecondary attendance, it paid limited attention to variation in postsecondary preparation activities. This study contrasts earlier indicators of student college knowledge with college preparation activities to understand variations in college enrollment among different racial and ethnic groups. Results indicate that concrete knowledge has less impact on minority postsecondary enrollment than taking more-advanced academic courses.

Assessing the importance of cultural capital on post-secondary education attendance in Canada

This paper extends the current literature on access to post-secondary education by investigating the role played by various family background characteristics related to the home environment and family habits and behaviours. Exploiting the extraordinary richness of the Youth in Transition Survey in this regard, we include whether the family ate dinner together, whether they discussed current affairs, and how often their children went to concerts – and if so, what kind of concerts. Many of these factors are found to have a significant relationship with attending post-secondary education, university in particular. Furthermore, these factors are in addition to – and at least to some degree independent of – more conventional influences such as parental education and family income. With appeal to the paradigm of ‘cultural capital’ – which refers to the knowledge, experiences, and connections which help individuals succeed in life – these results indicate how advantages in accessing higher levels of education accrue to those from families that are rich in this kind of asset, while others are left behind.

The differential effects of parental involvement on high school completion and postsecondary attendance

Previous studies have shown the impact of parental involvement on a number of student achievement, motivation, and engagement outcomes, but the extent to which parental involvement influences high school completion and postsecondary attendance has received less attention in the literature. Filling that gap, this study replicates and extends previous research (Fan & Williams, 2010) by examining the influence of various dimensions of parental involvement on high school completion and postsecondary attendance (with particular interest in dropouts who later earned GEDs and went on to college). Results show that parents’ educational expectations for their children play a significant role in whether students from all backgrounds persist toward completion of high school and whether they attend a postsecondary institution. This study also finds parent participation in school functions to be a significant positive predictor of both high school completion and postsecondary enrollment, while communication between parent and school about children’s school problems is negatively associated with both outcomes. The implications for expanding developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive policies for family and school engagement are discussed.

School connectedness and valuing as predictors of high school completion and postsecondary attendance among Latino youth

This longitudinal study examined whether school connectedness and valuing were protective factors in contributing to positive educational outcomes (i.e., high school completion and postsecondary attendance) among a nationally representative sample of Latino youth. Participants were drawn from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and included 1,743 Latino youth. Results from structural equation modeling, testing direct and indirect effects, showed that there were significant, indirect effects from school connectedness and school valuing to high school completion and postsecondary attendance, which were mediated by Latino students' classroom behavioral engagement. The structural equation model accounted for approximately 35% of the variance in Latino students' high school completion rates (R2 = .347, p < .001) and 21% of the variance in their postsecondary attendance rates (R2 = .211, p < .001). Results from multiple group analyses indicated that school connectedness and valuing may be protective factors for Latino students as compared to students from other racial/ethnic backgrounds.

The Missing Manual

This article explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest in using NSC data. Second, using information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we calculate enrollment coverage rates for NSC data over time, by state, institution type, and demographic student subgroups. We find that coverage is highest among public institutions and lowest (but growing) among for-profit colleges. Across students, enrollment coverage is lower for minorities but similar for males and females. We also explore two potentially less salient sources of non-coverage: suppressed student records due to privacy laws and matching errors due to typographic inaccuracies in student names. To illustrate how this collection of measurement errors may affect estimates of the levels and gaps in postsecondary attendance and persistence, we perform several case-study analyses using administrative transcript data from Michigan public colleges. We close with a discussion of practical issues for program evaluators using NSC data.

The Returns to the Federal Tax Credits for Higher Education

Three tax credits benefit households who pay tuition and fees for higher education. The credits have been justified as an investment by generating more educated people and thus more earnings and externalities associated with education. The credits have also been justified purely as tax cuts to benefit the middle class. In 2009, the generosity of and eligibility for the tax credits expanded enormously so that their 2011 cost was $25 billion. Using selected, de-identified data from the population of potential filers, we show how the credits are distributed across households with different incomes. We estimate the causal effects of the federal tax credits using two empirical strategies (regression kink and simulated instruments), which we show to be strong and very credibly valid for this application. The latter strategy exploits the massive expansion of the credits in 2009. We present causal estimates of the credits’ effects on postsecondary attendance, the type of college attended, the resources experienced in college, tuition paid, and financial aid received. We discuss the implications of our findings for society’s return on investment and for the tax credits’ budget neutrality over the long term (whether higher lifetime earnings generate sufficient taxes to recoup the tax expenditures). We assess several explanations as to why the credits appear to have negligible causal effects.

Elementary School Interventions

This study exploits a randomized trial of two light-touch elementary school interventions to estimate long-run impacts on postsecondary attendance and attainment. The first is a classroom management technique for developing behavioral skills in children. The second is a curricular intervention aimed at improving students’ core reading skills. We detect no average impact of either intervention on the likelihood of college enrollment or degree receipt, but find heterogeneous effects by student gender and initial level of academic achievement. Assignment to the behavioral intervention increases the likelihood of college attendance for females, especially at 2-year institutions, but has little impact on males. We find suggestive evidence that exposure to the behavioral intervention benefits low-performing students more than high-performers, whereas exposure to the curricular intervention influences college outcomes more for middle- to high-performing students.

Race, secondary school course of study, and college type

Race shapes many aspects of students’ high school experiences relevant to post-secondary educational attainment. We examine the racially-specific effects of high school course of study on type of college attended, whether two-year or four-year, using NELS 1988–2000 and a comprehensive measure of course intensity derived from students’ patterns of course-taking. Results include the presence of racially-specific effects of high school course of study, with racial/ethnic minority students in the middle course intensity ranges more likely to attend four-year college than Whites with similar coursework. Using a theory of racialized meritocracy, we also find that educational expectations mediate the relationships among race, course of study, and post-secondary attendance differently for students of different racial groups, such that they play a larger role in mediating the relationship between course of study and post-secondary attendance for White students.

Stratification and the Emergence of the Postsecondary Private Education Sector in Vietnam

Vietnam has a strong public postsecondary education sector that has only recently begun to experience growth in nonpublic institutions. I investigate how the growth of nonpublic institutions may be related to stratification in Vietnam. I find that these institutions are more likely to serve more advantaged students from South Vietnam. Students pay higher costs to attend them; however, they choose more lucrative fields, perhaps as a way to ensure good returns to this investment. This research suggests that as the private sector in Vietnam expands, the influence of family background and region of residence on postsecondary attendance may grow.