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Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion
Author(s) -
Dynarski Susan,
Hyman Joshua,
Schanzenbach Diane Whitmore
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/pam.21715
Subject(s) - degree (music) , percentage point , test (biology) , educational attainment , mathematics education , postsecondary education , random assignment , psychology , demographic economics , medical education , higher education , economics , medicine , mathematics , statistics , economic growth , paleontology , physics , acoustics , biology
This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We used the random assignment in Project STAR (the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment) to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on existing work in this area with unusually detailed data on college enrollment spells and the previously unexplored outcome of college degree completion. We found that assignment to a small class increases students’ probability of attending college by 2.7 percentage points, with effects more than twice as large among black students. Among students enrolled in the poorest third of schools, the effect is 7.3 percentage points. Smaller classes increased the likelihood of earning a college degree by 1.6 percentage points and shifted students toward high‐earning fields such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), business, and economics. We found that test‐score effects at the time of the experiment were an excellent predictor of long‐term improvements in postsecondary outcomes.