Earnings Of Students Research Articles

Crossing the Finish Line but Losing the Race? Socioeconomic Inequalities in the Labor Market Trajectories of Community College Graduates

Abstract Despite decades and hundreds of billions of dollars of federal and state investment in policies to promote postsecondary educational attainment as a key lever for increasing the economic mobility of lower income populations, research continues to show large and meaningful differences in the mid-career earnings of students from families in the bottom and top income quintiles. Prior research has not disentangled whether these disparities are due to differential sorting into colleges and majors, or due to barriers that lower socioeconomic status (SES) graduates encounter during the college-to-career transition. Using linked individual-level higher education and Unemployment Insurance records for nearly a decade of students from the Virginia Community College System, we compare the labor market outcomes of higher and lower SES community college graduates within the same college, program, and academic performance level. Our analyses show that, conditional on employment, lower SES graduates earn nearly $500/quarter less than their higher SES peers one year after graduation, relative to higher SES graduate average of $10,846/quarter. The magnitude of this disparity persists through at least three years after graduation. Disparities are concentrated among non-nursing programs, in which gaps persist seven years from graduation. Our results highlight the importance of greater focus on the college-to-career transition.

College Football Performance, Student Earnings, and the Gender Wage Gap

Abstract Fluctuations in U.S. college football team performance have been shown to have impacts on the student experience. This study explores the long-run implications, examining the impact of college football team performance relative to the period of student attendance on future earnings. Better college football team performance during the early years of school attendance increases average wages of male students, but does not impact female wages. Supplemental evidence suggests that positive shocks to student social networks may partly explain the positive impact on earnings. Better team performance near the time of graduation increases average wages for both men and women.

Factors Predicting Overweight Prevention Behavior in Junior High School Students in The Eastern Economic Corridor Thailand. Case Study: Small And Medium Schools

The development of the area as ASEAN's leading economic zone is an issue of concern in modernization, such as excessive food consumption and decreased physical activity. Promoting health in children is crucial, and one way to achieve this is by preventing them from becoming overweight. This research aimed to identify the factors influencing overweight prevention behaviors among junior high school students In the Eastern Economic Corridor Thailand. Case Study: small and medium schools. We collected data from 91 subjects using a self-administered questionnaire. The study subjects were randomly selected by systematic random sampling. Data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, and multiple regression analysis. The study showed that 22.0% of study subjects were overweight and obese. The results revealed that factors affecting overweight prevention behaviors included student earnings management and role model from family and friends on overweight prevention were predicted the overweight prevention behaviors of junior high school students at 30.8% statistically significant at 0.05. In conclusion, as a result of the prevention of overweight in junior high school, stakeholders such as families, schools, and communities should apply these factors in organizing activities to prevent overweight in children.

CTE Teacher Licensure and Long-Term Student Outcomes

AbstractWe use longitudinal data from Massachusetts that link high school course-taking records in career and technical education (CTE) to postsecondary student outcomes to provide the first empirical evidence linking characteristics of CTE teachers to later student outcomes. We find that CTE teachers who received better scores on subject performance tests required for licensure tend to have students with higher longer-term earnings than CTE teachers who received lower scores on these tests, controlling for other factors. Specifically, we estimate that a 1 standard deviation increase in teacher performance on these tests is associated with about a $1,000 increase in average expected earnings for the teacher's students five years after their expected graduation date, controlling for licensure test area and observable differences between students.

Investing in the Workforce: The Impact of Performance-Based Funding on Student Earnings Outcomes

ABSTRACT A growing number of states use performance-based funding (PBF) systems to tie appropriations to student outcomes. Yet while many studies have examined the effects of PBF on enrollment and completion outcomes, no research has considered whether PBF affects post-college outcomes. This is of particular importance as more states directly incentivize colleges to improve student earnings and have students major in high-demand fields. We used the first detailed longitudinal dataset of state PBF policies to examine the effects of PBF on student earnings and found some modest positive effects concentrated among students who were already enrolled in college when PBF was first implemented. However, these small increases could also reflect other trends occurring prior to the implementation of PBF and analyses show this increase was not sustained among later cohorts.

Returns to education in China: Evidence from the great higher education expansion

China experienced a near 5-fold increase in annual Higher Education (HE) enrolment in the decade starting in 1999. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we show that the Great HE Expansion has exacerbated a large pre-existing urban-rural gap in educational attainment underpinned by the hukou (household registration) system. We instrument the years of schooling with the interaction between urban hukou status during childhood and the timing of the expansion – in essence a difference-in-differences estimator using rural students to control for common time trends. We find that the Great HE raised earnings by 17% for men and 12% for women respectively, allowing for county fixed-effects. These Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) estimates, which are robust to additional controls for hukou status at birth fully interacted with birth hukou province, can be interpreted as the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) of education on earnings for urban students who enrolled in HE only because of the Great HE Expansion. For the selected subsample of respondents with parental education information, we find that the 2SLS returns for students from more disadvantaged backgrounds are at least as high as their more advantaged counterparts, for both genders.

Disrupted academic careers: The returns to time off after high school

This paper asks how academic breaks after high school affect individuals’ college and labor market outcomes. We exploit a policy that altered academic calendars in two regions of Colombia, which caused thousands of high school graduates to have to wait an extra semester to start college. Using administrative data and a synthetic control design, we show that the academic break caused many students to forgo enrolling in college at all. The academic break reduced the early-career earnings of students with high levels of academic preparation, but it had little impact on earnings for less-prepared students.

Science education and labor market outcomes in a developing economy

AbstractWe examine the association between studying science in higher secondary school and labor market earnings in India. Studying science in high school is associated with 22% greater earnings than studying business or humanities. Earnings for science students are further enhanced with some fluency in English. Science education is also associated with more years of education, completing a professional degree, returns to entrepreneurship and working in public sector positions. Primary survey of high school students shows no discernible differences in behavioral characteristics of science students compared to others.

Revisiting Sweden's comprehensive school reform: Effects on education and earnings

SummaryWe revisit a Swedish comprehensive school reform first evaluated by Meghir and Palme (2005). This reform increased years of schooling and abolished tracking. We extend the original analysis to the full population and introduce an improved education measure. Our results confirm the original overall finding of small average earnings effects. However, we find considerably larger increases in educational attainment and no evidence of decreased labor earnings for students with high‐educated fathers. Our analysis provides two new important insights: First, we find no evidence that de‐tracking had differential earnings effects across socioeconomic groups. Second, previous instrumental variable (IV) estimates using similar administrative education data are substantially upward biased.

Disrupted Academic Careers: The Returns to Time Off after High School

This paper asks how academic breaks after high school affect individuals’ college and labor market outcomes. We exploit a policy that altered academic calendars in two regions of Colombia, which caused thousands of high school graduates to have to wait an extra semester to start college. Using administrative data and a synthetic control design, we show that the academic break caused many students to forgo enrolling in college at all. High-ability students who did not attend college had lower earnings seven years later, but forgoing college had little effect on earnings for lower-ability students.

Temperature and high-stakes cognitive performance: Evidence from the national college entrance examination in China

We provide the first nation-wide estimates of the effects of temperature on high-stakes cognitive performance in a developing country using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in China. The NCEE is one of the most important institutions in China and affects millions of families. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in temperature during the exam period within counties (2 °C/3.6 °F) decreases the total test score by 0.68%, or 5.83% of a standard deviation, with effects concentrated on the highest performing students. This suggests that temperature plays an important role in high-stakes cognitive performance and has potentially far-reaching impacts for the careers and lifetime earnings of students.

Who benefits from privileged peers? Evidence from siblings in schools

SummaryBy comparing siblings attending the same school at different points in time, we investigate whether the effect of peer quality on long‐term labor market outcomes varies with parental background. We find that exposure to better peers—who have higher mean parental education—increases lifetime earnings of disadvantaged students, coming from families with low parental education, but penalizes privileged students from better educated families. These results suggest that desegregation policies that allocate disadvantaged students to schools with better peers produce long‐term benefits. We discuss mechanisms and show that human capital accumulation, ordinal rank and network effects contribute to explain our findings.

The Costs and Benefits of Early College High Schools

Early Colleges (ECs) provide high school students access to college coursework with the goal of increasing postsecondary opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students. We examine the impact of ECs on postsecondary attainment, calculate the resulting monetary benefits, and then estimate the per-student costs of ECs compared to traditional high schools to compare costs and benefits. Our findings indicate that students enrolling in ECs in our study are more likely to attend college and graduate with an associate or bachelor's degree. Increased educational attainment from EC enrollment results in lifetime benefits of almost $58,000 per student. ECs cost approximately $950 more than traditional high schools per student per year, resulting in an overall cost of $3,800 more per student across four years of high school. Comparing benefits to cost, we estimate a net present value (NPV) of $54,000 per student and a benefit to cost ratio of 15.1. Even when using conservative estimates of costs (upper bound) and benefits (lower bound), we calculate an NPV of over $27,000 and a benefit to cost ratio of 4.6. These results indicate that investment in ECs pays off through increased earnings for EC students, increased tax revenue, and decreased government spending.

Should we sort it out later? The effect of tracking age on long-run outcomes

This study estimates the long-run effect of the school tracking age on educational attainment and labour market outcomes. We exploit within-country variation in tracking ages for students in the highest two tracks in the Netherlands, using the supply of early tracking schools at the municipal level as an instrument for early tracking (tracking at age 12–13 vs. age 14). Combining several data sources, we find that early tracking leads to a decrease in higher education completion, and that it lowers earnings for both low-ability and medium-ability students in the sample. Estimates for high-ability students are positive but imprecisely estimated. The negative effects appear largely driven by higher misallocation of students to tracks when they are sorted early. Robustness analyses strongly suggest that the results are not driven by sorting between municipalities.

Income Segregation and Intergenerational Mobility Across Colleges in the United States*

Abstract We construct publicly available statistics on parents’ incomes and students’ earnings outcomes for each college in the United States using deidentified data from tax records. These statistics reveal that the degree of parental income segregation across colleges is very high, similar to that across neighborhoods. Differences in postcollege earnings between children from low- and high-income families are much smaller among students who attend the same college than across colleges. Colleges with the best earnings outcomes predominantly enroll students from high-income families, although a few mid-tier public colleges have both low parent income levels and high student earnings. Linking these income data to SAT and ACT scores, we simulate how changes in the allocation of students to colleges affect segregation and intergenerational mobility. Equalizing application, admission, and matriculation rates across parental income groups conditional on test scores would reduce segregation substantially, primarily by increasing the representation of middle-class students at more selective colleges. However, it would have little effect on the fraction of low-income students at elite private colleges because there are relatively few students from low-income families with sufficiently high SAT/ACT scores. Differences in parental income distributions across colleges could be eliminated by giving low- and middle-income students a sliding-scale preference in the application and admissions process similar to that implicitly given to legacy students at elite private colleges. Assuming that 80% of observational differences in students’ earnings conditional on test scores, race, and parental income are due to colleges’ causal effects—a strong assumption, but one consistent with prior work—such changes could reduce intergenerational income persistence among college students by about 25%. We conclude that changing how students are allocated to colleges could substantially reduce segregation and increase intergenerational mobility, even without changing colleges’ educational programs.

Internet for student earnings: working place or communication space

The article is devoted to the study of new forms of e-business, as in connection with the increasing influence of Internet Commerce, there is a fundamentally new situation in social and labor relations. In recent years, there has been a steady trend of increasing students' interest in earnings in the Network. Students work on the computer, earning money by performing various tasks and projects, which actually led to the development of new forms of employment. The aim of the study is to analyze the practices of copywriting as a form of earnings in the Internet space. The leading method for the study of this problem is the method of free interview, which allows identifying the pros and cons, as well as the subtleties of students’ work on the Internet. The article analyzes the concept of copywriting. Motives of activity in the field of copywriting are described; skills necessary in this type of work are revealed and the basic principles of the copywriter’s successful work are considered. The advantages and disadvantages of copywriting relative to other forms of earnings in the Internet space are established. The novelty and originality of the study lies in the fact that the main socio-psychological qualities necessary for the work of a copywriter are highlighted: literacy; the ability to express thoughts concisely; attentiveness. The main motives of students to earn money on the Internet are established: self-realization in the profession and improvement of their skills; the desire to independently manage their work and free time; the desire to communicate with interesting people. The advantages of copywriting for students are identified: the ability to work remotely and at home, without visiting the office; flexible schedule and the ability to choose the amount of their load; unlimited opportunities for self-development (books, communication on thematic forums); getting pleasure from their work; regulation of their communication circle; self-realization in the profession; the ability to increase their income and its dependence only on the business activity of the copywriter and his/her responsible attitude to business. Disadvantages of copywriting for students are identified: instability (risk of payment’s non-receipt); abnormal working schedule; the need to spend time on activities unrelated to specialization; lack of experience exchange and lack of communication; low wages, which is determined by high competition; the problem of income legalization, as well as the lack of social guarantees, social package, lack of career growth, promotion. The data obtained in the work can be used in labor psychology, age psychology, social psychology, pedagogy, sociology, as well as for further theoretical development of this issue.

The Relationship Between Work During College and Post College Earnings.

Prior research suggests that undergraduates employed during term time are less likely to graduate. Using transcript data from a large multi-campus university in the United States, combined with student earnings data from state administrative records, the authors find that traditional-age students who worked for pay during college on average earned more after leaving college than similar students who did not work. This post-college earnings premium is on par with the benefit from completing a degree, even after controlling for demographic and academic achievement characteristics, across various student sub-groups, and including models that account for selection bias. Implications of these findings for theories of education and social stratification, and for educational policy are considered.

Cost-benefit analysis of an employee assistance program for a geographically dispersed workforce in South Australia

The South Australia Department for Education employs approximately 30,000 people (40.2% outside the major city, Adelaide). This study conducted a cost-benefit analysis of its employee assistance program from the Department’s perspective, focusing on remoteness. The employee assistance program utilization rate outside the major city was 13% below that in the major city. Based on improved absenteeism and presenteeism, measured fiscal benefits per user (1,365.79 Australian dollars [AUD] or 1,021.48 US dollars [USD]) were 3.34 times the costs (409.27 AUD or 306.09 USD), indicating a highly favorable return. Our sensitivity analysis found that if the increase in student lifetime earnings, worth about 76,000 AUD (57,000 USD) yearly, had been included, it would have increased the total benefits by 5.3% and raised the benefit-cost ratio to 3.51. Although telephone sessions were available, the average number of sessions per participant was 49% higher for the in-person only modality (2.82) compared to the telephone-only modality (1.89). This apparent preference for in-person sessions indicates a challenge for regional and remote areas, where access is difficult. The study recommends proactive measures to increase utilization outside its major city.

Temperature and High-Stakes Cognitive Performance: Evidence from the National College Entrance Examination in China

We provide the first nation-wide estimates on temperature effects on high-stakes cognitive performance in a developing country using data from the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) in China. The NCEE is one of the most important institutions in China and affects hundreds of millions of families. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in temperature (3.29° C) decreases the total test score by 1.12% (9.62% of a standard deviation) and decreases the probability of getting into first-tier universities by 1.97% (4.38% of a standard deviation). This suggests that temperature plays an important role in high-stakes cognitive performance and has potentially far-reaching impacts for the careers and lifetime earnings of students.

The Effect on Earnings of the Applied Baccalaureate Degree

Objective: This study evaluates the postgraduate earnings of students with an applied baccalaureate (AB) degree compared to the earnings of students with the same associate degree but no baccalaureate degree. The research questions include the following: For those students who earn an AB degree, does it result in higher earnings than the associate degree? Does the earnings difference vary by field of study? Which student characteristics account for variation in earnings beyond the effect of the AB degree? Method: This study used propensity score weighted regression to examine the difference in earnings of AB degree and associate degree graduates in three programs—health, technology, and social science—at three different community and technical colleges in Washington state. Results: We find that the AB degree graduates have higher earnings than associate degree graduates in each of the three programs, although for certain programs the earnings increase is small enough to be explained by characteristics intrinsic to the student. Higher earnings are also associated to other student characteristics such as age, gender, earnings prior to enrollment, and academic proficiency, indicating a difference in economic benefit for some students. Contributions: The findings from this study contribute to the overall understanding of the complex relationship between level of education and earnings, specifically the impact on earnings of an AB above and beyond the associate degree. The analyses revealed evidence of a gender gap in earnings by program, which is an area that requires further study.