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Community College Entrance and Bachelor’s Degree Attainment: A Replication and Update
Abstract
Objectives: We explore the influence of initial enrollment at a community college on the attainment of a bachelor’s degree. Methods: Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS: 12/17) and propensity score analysis, we compare baccalaureate degree outcomes of recent high school graduates who reported their intention to earn a bachelor’s degree and initially enrolled at a community college to those students who began at a 4-year institution. Results: We found initial enrollment in a community college has a negative effect on bachelor’s degree attainment. Our findings are consistent across varying outcome and sample specifications. The magnitude of our findings is consistent with a recent meta-analysis. We found that almost two-thirds of our sample who started at a community college enrolled in a 4-year institution, a fact that has important implications for practice. Contributions: Given the recent research suggesting that more comprehensive programs can drastically increase community college students’ attainment (e.g., CUNY ASAP), we advocate for additional supports for bachelor’s degree-intending community college students. Since the majority of those who start their education at a community college enroll in a 4-year institution, we add to the growing call that discussions about ways to improve the success of bachelor’s degree-intending community college students must include 4-year institutions as partners.
... This is supported by extensive research which has shown that teachers are the most crucial human resource in delivering quality education to students in such colleges, often surpassing other individuals in students' lives outside of their families (Chetty et al., 2014;Jackson, 2018;Kraft, 2019). In addition to the aforementioned studies, a majority of the research conducted on community colleges has been centered on student enrollment and academic achievement (Pretlow et al., 2022), strategies to enhance academic performance (Moss & Kelcey, 2022), students' evaluation and selection of online resources (Nguyen et al., 2022), the role of community colleges in rural development (Harmon et al., 2022), financial requirements (Koh et al., 2022), and their impact on academic performance. However, the study of teacher motivation in unexplored contexts would offer valuable insights for scholars, practitioners, and community college leaders. ...
Background: There is ample evidence to suggest that the motivation of teachers plays a significant role in the success of their students. While there is a substantial body of literature on teacher motivation, most of it is centered on schools and universities. Objectives: This article presents an analysis of the perception of motivation among teachers in community colleges in Nepal, using Adams' equity theory of motivation as a framework. Findings: The study was conducted using an interpretive phenomenological design, analyzing the audio transcriptions of semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers who held full-time positions at four different community colleges in Nepal. The results revealed that teachers in community colleges enjoyed their work, experienced positive attitudes, and had a conducive work environment. Furthermore, community college teachers expected equitable treatment in terms of policies and practices, salary and benefits, administrative procedures, opportunities for professional growth and development, and recognition from their institutions. Contributions: This information can be used to inform policy and practice in community colleges in Nepal, as well as in other similar contexts.
... The focus on community colleges is an important element of the message. A community college promise might draw students away from universities and reduce the likelihood that they will attain a bachelor's degree (Goodman, 2008;Goodman et al., 2017;Cohodes & Goodman, 2014;Pretlow et al., 2022;Mountjoy, 2022;National Student Clearinghouse, 2022). Students on the margin of going to college who are drawn in by a promise might not progress to credit-bearing coursework (Pluhta & Penny, 2013) and might not graduate at the same rates. ...
This study found that the MATC Promise increased college attainment by encouraging Milwaukee high school students to access state and federal aid, and to consider matriculating to their local two-year college. The MATC Promise exemplifies the last-dollar model of college aid. If seniors at Milwaukee area public high schools complete academic milestones, apply for financial aid, qualify based on low family income, and matriculate to Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), then the Promise covers any remaining tuition charges. The message promoting free college was the program’s main element, since the funding support for eligible students came primarily from existing state and federal aid. We studied outcomes for the first four graduating classes after the Promise was launched, compared to the trend in Milwaukee for the previous six graduating classes. The rate of matriculation to MATC increased from 10 percent to 15 percent. There was no such increase in matriculation to other technical college districts around the state, suggesting that the increase was caused by the Promise. The increase in enrollment was larger among lower-income students and those in the urban Milwaukee Public Schools. Those students were more likely to apply for financial aid earlier, regardless of whether they ultimately qualified for the Promise, and their rate of matriculation to any college increased from 45 percent to 49 percent. There was no indication that attracting additional students to college led to lower graduation rates, though we were limited to examining credentials earned in two years or less.
... There have been multiple previous longitudinal quantitative studies of transfer student success (e.g., Bahr et al., 2022;Jaggars et al., 2016;Monaghan & Attewell, 2015;Pretlow et al., 2022;Spencer, 2023). These studies tracked, for long periods, community college students' progress, including whether they attained bachelor's degrees. ...
This longitudinal study of 17,455 students, the majority from underrepresented groups, investigated leaks in the vertical transfer pipeline from associate’s-degree program entry to bachelor’s-degree receipt. Investigated were both the size of the leaks and some associated variables. Pipeline progress examinations included quantification of early persistence, plus application to, enrollment and persistence in, and graduation from, bachelor’s programs. The examined associated variables included student demographic characteristics and possible pipeline leak malleable factors: academic preparation and performance and financial need. Overall, only 23% of the original cohort received a bachelor’s degree after eight years. In addition, this study is the first to identify and quantify the transfer melt leakage point (students accepted for vertical transfer who do not enroll in bachelor’s programs), and the first to have quantified transfer shock (a transfer-related decrease in GPA) in a large general cohort (shown by 16 percentage points of the cohort). Variables involving quicker degree progress (e.g., being exempt from remediation and enrolling full-time) were negatively associated with pipeline leaks. Together the results provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners regarding how to increase vertical transfer pipeline output and increase bachelor’s degrees by community college students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, thus increasing higher education equity.
Community colleges are two‐year educational institutions that represent a global movement embedded in local community norms. Community colleges serve local economic needs by offering affordable courses that transfer to four‐year institutions; technical and occupational training; continuing and remedial education programs; and workforce development. In the USA they have become a key point of entry to college for those who could not otherwise afford or access a college education, and a key provider of English as a second language to adult immigrants. Community college student populations tend to be made up of both lower socioeconomic levels and under‐represented groups; thus, they serve a democratizing function within higher education and the larger society. These institutions face particular challenges because success, funding, and political capital in higher education are tied to a neoliberal emphasis on degree completion and upward social mobility, yet efforts to increase retention and accelerate the time to degree completion can undermine efforts at accommodating the most vulnerable students. This entry examines the open‐door and democratizing functions of community colleges, and the competing challenges on economic and political levels experienced by these institutions.
With nearly half the states having authorized community colleges to award baccalaureate degrees, the community college baccalaureate (CCB) has become an increasingly common feature of the landscape of American higher education. While there has been an expansion of research on the CCB in recent years, the research to date consists mainly of studies at the state or institutional level with few attempts at comparison even between states let alone between the United States and other countries. This article compares the baccalaureate-granting of American community colleges with the comparable activity of counterpart institutions of five other countries. It provides comparative data on the scale of the CCB; examines some of the key factors that contribute to differences in the scale of the CCB in different countries; and discusses the implications of the differences in scale for some of the key issues that have been raised in the literature on the CCB in the United States: the stature and legitimacy of the degree, its effectiveness in widening access to the baccalaureate, and maintenance of the traditional mission of the community college. The article concludes that international comparative research on the CCB can be valuable because it allows for greater variation in the scale of the CCB, the conditions that give rise to it, and in the institutional arrangements for the CCB than do single country studies.
Promise programs are proliferating across the United States, with wide variation in their design. Using national data on 33 Promise programs affecting single, 2-year colleges, this study examines program effects on first-time, full-time college enrollments of students by race/ethnicity and gender classification. Results suggest Promise programs are associated with large percent increases in enrollments of Black and Hispanic students, especially students classified as females, at eligible colleges. Promise programs with merit requirements are associated with higher enrollment of White and Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander female students; those with income requirements are negatively associated with enrollment of most demographic groups. More generous Promise programs are associated with greater enrollment increases among demographic groups with historically higher levels of postsecondary attainment.
Despite the long-standing centrality and growing prevalence of transfer in the American postsecondary system, students, college professionals, and policymakers decry the lack of credit transferability between colleges. However, limited research has examined the factors most related to the magnitude of credit loss students experience. This study investigated how students’ pre-transfer academic characteristics, demographic characteristics, and the institutions they transferred to and from influenced the magnitude of credit loss they experienced. Data is drawn from statewide cohorts of vertical transfer students in two states: Hawaii and North Carolina. Although a number of demographic and pre-transfer academic factors were found to relate to credit loss, the predictors of credit loss varied appreciably across states. Given the significant variability in how states and postsecondary systems manage transfer and articulation, the findings point to the need for additional state-level research exploring the determinants of credit loss for transfer students.
Background/Context
A longstanding debate continues concerning whether community colleges democratize education by expanding enrollment or divert students from attaining a bachelor's degree. The extant evidence is contradictory, but recent findings suggest that community colleges are serving to democratize education without a sizeable diversion effect preventing students from ultimately earning the bachelor's degree. The diversion effect appears to be much smaller than previously stated.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study
The main objective of this study is to compare the effect of being a successful community college “transfer” student instead of a “rising junior” in a 4-year college on bachelor's degree attainment (250 transfers and 790 rising juniors). This study examines the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) and institutional selectivity on the bachelor's degree completion of transfer students and rising 4-year college juniors.
Data Collection and Analysis
We analyze the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/2000) high school senior class of 1992 to compare the degree completion outcomes of two samples—transfer and rising junior students—with equivalent degree aspirations. Logistic regression is used to estimate the differences in attainment. Interactions are included to examine the effect of SES and institutional selectivity. To address the problem of selection of students into institutions, we control for proxy variables for students’ motivation. In addition, a Heckman two-stage regression model is estimated using the average state tuition in the state where the student finished high school as the instrumental variable. Finally, to adjust for unobserved institutional characteristics related to the state where the institution is located, a model that includes a state-level dummy variable indicating those that have strong transfer and articulation systems is estimated to more fully control for state characteristics.
Findings/Results
Three main findings emerge from this inquiry. First, the negative effect of being a transfer as opposed to a rising junior diminishes substantially after controlling for differences in SES. The negative effect “disappears” in the sense of not being statistically significant, after corrections for self-selection bias and the addition of variables controlling for transfer policies in the state where the student attended college. Second, and consistent with prior research, degree completion rates increase with selectivity of the 4-year institution attended. Third, the results show that when we allow the effects of community college attendance to vary by SES by introducing an interaction term, there are no statistically significant differences between the completion rates of low-SES transfer and low-SES rising junior students.
Conclusions/Recommendations
Our main conclusion is that previous estimates have overstated the diversion effect. Alongside other recent contributions to the democratization-ver-sus-diversion-effect debate, this study provides an additional piece of evidence demonstrating that the diversion effect is much smaller than was previously estimated. Community college practitioners should feel confident in counseling traditional-age students who want to earn the bachelor's degree to transfer, because the evidence shows that they are as likely to succeed as their 4-year college counterparts.
Community colleges are controversial educational institutions, often said to simultaneously expand college opportunities and diminish baccalaureate attainment. We assess the seemingly contradictory functions of community colleges by attending to effect heterogeneity and to alternative counterfactual conditions. Using data on postsecondary outcomes of high school graduates of Chicago Public Schools, we find that enrolling at a community college penalizes more advantaged students who otherwise would have attended four-year colleges, particularly highly selective schools; however, these students represent a relatively small portion of the community college population, and these estimates are almost certainly biased. On the other hand, enrolling at a community college has a modest positive effect on bachelor's degree completion for disadvantaged students who otherwise would not have attended college; these students represent the majority of community college goers. We conclude that discussions among scholars, policymakers, and practitioners should move beyond considering the pros and cons of community college attendance for students in general to attending to the implications of community college attendance for targeted groups of students.
It is well established that students who begin post-secondary education at a community college are less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than otherwise similar undergraduates who begin at a 4-year school, but there is less consensus over the mechanisms generating this disparity. We explore these using national longitudinal transcript data and propensity-score methods. Inferior academic preparation does not seem to be the main culprit: We find few differences between students’ academic progress at each type of institution during the first 2 years of college and (contrary to some earlier scholarship) students who do transfer have BA graduation rates equal to similar students who begin at 4-year colleges. However, after 2 years, credit accumulation diverges in the two kinds of institutions, due in part to community college students’ greater involvement in employment, and a higher likelihood of stopping out of college, after controlling for their academic performance. Contrary to some earlier claims, we find that a vocational emphasis in community college is not a major factor behind the disparity. One important mechanism is the widespread loss of credits that occurs after undergraduates transfer from a community college to a 4-year institution; the greater the loss, the lower the chances of completing a BA. However, earlier claims that community college students receive lower aid levels after transfer and that transfers disproportionately fail to survive through the senior year are not supported by our analyses.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Both large and small sample theory show that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates. Applications include: (i) matched sampling on the univariate propensity score, which is a generalization of discriminant matching, (ii) multivariate adjustment by subclassification on the propensity score where the same subclasses are used to estimate treatment effects for all outcome variables and in all subpopulations, and (iii) visual representation of multivariate covariance adjustment by a two- dimensional plot.
The student financial aid programs that were authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act were intended to ensure
that inadequate financial resources would not limit access to college. Nonetheless, despite substantial investment in student
financial aid not only by the federal government but also by state governments, colleges and universities, and other entities,
college access and choice remain stratified by socioeconomic status (SES) and race/ethnicity. Although students received about
$122 billion in financial aid from all sources in 2003–04 (The College Board, 2004), individuals with low family incomes,
individuals whose parents have not attended college, African-Americans, and Hispanics are less likely than other individuals
to enroll in college. When they do enroll, these groups are concentrated in lower price institutions, such as public two-year
colleges and less selective four-year colleges and universities (Baum and Payea, 2004; Ellwood and Kane, 2000; National Center
for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003, 2004; Thomas and Perna, 2004).
This paper describes a summit on Community Colleges in the Evolving STEM Education Landscape organized by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and held at the Carnegie Institution for Science on December 15, 2011. This summit followed a similar event organized by Dr. Jill Biden, spouse of the Vice President, and held at the White House in October 2010, which sought to bring national attention to the changing missions and purposes of community colleges in contemporary American society.1 The NRC/NAE event built on the White House summit, while focusing on the changing roles of community colleges in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. An in-depth summary of the summit was prepared by the NRC and NAE for publication in late Spring 2012 by the National Academies Press (NRC and National Academy of Engineering, 2012 ). This paper provides a synopsis of that report, which is available at www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13399, and emphasizes how we can use the report to improve STEM education for our students, but also how much progress still needs to be made to realize this ideal.
The propensity score is the probability of treatment assignment conditional on observed baseline characteristics. The propensity score allows one to design and analyze an observational (nonrandomized) study so that it mimics some of the particular characteristics of a randomized controlled trial. In particular, the propensity score is a balancing score: conditional on the propensity score, the distribution of observed baseline covariates will be similar between treated and untreated subjects. I describe 4 different propensity score methods: matching on the propensity score, stratification on the propensity score, inverse probability of treatment weighting using the propensity score, and covariate adjustment using the propensity score. I describe balance diagnostics for examining whether the propensity score model has been adequately specified. Furthermore, I discuss differences between regression-based methods and propensity score-based methods for the analysis of observational data. I describe different causal average treatment effects and their relationship with propensity score analyses.
Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete a baccalaureate degree. However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at a two-year institution. This paper examines how the outcomes of community college entrants compare to similar students who initially entered four-year institutions within the Ohio public higher education system. Using a detailed dataset, we track outcomes for nine years and employ multiple strategies to deal with selection issues: propensity score matching and instrumental variables. The results suggest that straightforward estimates are significantly biased, but even after accounting for selection, students who initially begin at a community college were 14.5 percent less likely to complete a bachelor's degree within nine years.
In the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly looked to the schools--and, in particular, to the nation's colleges and universities--as guardians of the cherished national ideal of equality of opportunity. With the best jobs increasingly monopolized by those with higher education, the opportunity to attend college has become an integral part of the American dream of upward mobility. The two-year college--which now enrolls more than four million students in over 900 institutions--is a central expression of this dream, and its invention at the turn of the century constituted one of the great innovations in the history of American education. By offering students of limited means the opportunity to start higher education at home and to later transfer to a four-year institution, the two-year school provided a major new pathway to a college diploma--and to the nation's growing professional and managerial classes. But in the past two decades, the community college has undergone a profound change, shifting its emphasis from liberal-arts transfer courses to terminal vocational programs. Drawing on developments nationwide as well as in the specific case of Massachusetts, Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel offer a history of community colleges in America, explaining why this shift has occurred after years of student resistance and examining its implications for upward mobility. As the authors argue in this exhaustively researched and pioneering study, the junior college has always faced the contradictory task of extending a college education to the hitherto excluded, while diverting the majority of them from the nation's four-year colleges and universities. Very early on, two-year college administrators perceived vocational training for "semi-professional" work as their and their students' most secure long-term niche in the educational hierarchy. With two thirds of all community college students enrolled in vocational programs, the authors contend that the dream of education as a route to upward mobility, as well as the ideal of equal educational opportunity for all, are seriously threatened. With the growing public debate about the state of American higher education and with more than half of all first-time degree-credit students now enrolled in community colleges, a full-scale, historically grounded examination of their place in American life is long overdue. This landmark study provides such an examination, and in so doing, casts critical light on what is distinctive not only about American education, but American society itself.
Decades of research have estimated the effect of entering a community college on bachelor’s degree attainment. In this study, we examined the influence of methodological choices, including sample restrictions and identification strategies, on estimated effects from studies published between 1970 and 2017. After systematically reviewing the literature, we leveraged meta-analysis to assess average estimates and examine the role of moderators. In our preferred model, entering a community college was associated with a 23-percentage-point decrease in the probability of baccalaureate attainment, on average, compared with entering a four-year college. The size of effects appeared to grow over the past three decades, though this coincides with substantial shifts in the college-going population. Methodological choices, particularly how researchers define the treatment group, explain some variation in estimates across studies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for future inquiry and for policy.
Does access to 4-year colleges affect degree completion for students who would otherwise attend 2-year colleges? Admission to Georgia’s 4-year public sector requires minimum SAT scores. Regression discontinuity estimates show that access to this sector increases 4-year college enrollment and college quality, largely by diverting students from 2-year colleges. Access substantially increases bachelor’s degree completion rates for these relatively low-skilled students. SAT-retaking behavior suggests students value access to 4-year public colleges, though perhaps less than they should. Our results imply that absolute college quality matters more than match quality, and they suggest potential unintended consequences of free community college proposals.
Students starting at a two-year college are much less likely to graduate than similar students who start at a four-year college, but the sources of this attainment gap are largely unexplained. This paper investigates the attainment consequences of sector choice and peer quality among recent high school graduates. Using data on all Preliminary SAT (PSAT) test-takers between 2004 and 2006, we develop a novel measure of peer ability for most two-year and four-year colleges in the United States—the average PSAT of enrolled students. We document substantial variation in this measure of peer quality across two-year colleges and nontrivial overlap between the two-year and four-year sectors. We find that half the gap in bachelor’s degree attainment rates across sectors is explained by differences in peers, leaving room for structural barriers to transferring between institutions to also play an important role.
Illinois education policymakers have adopted the completion agenda that emphasizes increasing postsecondary credential attainment. Meeting completion agenda goals necessitates addressing the achievement gap. To aid in developing policy to support improved completion, this study analyzes a comprehensive statewide dataset of the 2003 Illinois high school graduating class attending 4-year institutions using Cox regression survival analysis. Study findings indicate that African American (0.768 odds ratio) and Hispanic students (0.746) were significantly less likely to complete a baccalaureate degree within 7 years of graduating from high school when compared with their White peers. Furthermore, significance held regardless of income level. Several factors significantly related to improved likelihood of baccalaureate completion were identified including high school composite American College Testing (ACT) score, dual credit and advanced placement (AP) course taking, type of curriculum, ACT English and mathematics scores, and completing the ACT core curriculum. Analysis was conducted by race and income to compare the differences in significance across these groups.
Research studies have been ambivalent about whether enrolling in community college makes completing a bachelor’s degree less likely than directly enrolling in a four-year institution. This study uses propensity score matching with a posttreatment adjustment to determine the treatment effect associated with taking the community college to four-year college transfer pathway. Each transfer student was matched to a four-year college junior from the same high school who enrolled at an equally selective four-year college. We found no significant difference between transfers and native juniors, demonstrating the viability of the community college to four-year pathway. Policy implications are provided.
The mean levels of educational expectations of American high school students have increased over the past generation; individual educational expectations change as students mature. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study and the Education Longitudinal Study, we examined simultaneously the changes in individuals’ expectations from 10th to 12th grade, and how these students’ revisions of their expectations changed across cohorts. The results indicated that today a bachelor’s degree is the normative expectation. Further, the class of 2004 decreased their expectations more often than they increased them, in opposition to the trend in the class of 1992. Finally, inequality between social classes in forming higher educational expectation has been maintained across generations, and growth in academic skills tested and encouragement from family, school, and peer groups is associated closely with changes in expectations.
Students who do not file the free application for federal student aid (FAFSA), or who file after the priority application deadline, are at risk of not receiving grant aid that could help them persist and graduate from college. This study used data from the beginning postsecondary student study (BPS:04/06) to examine FAFSA filing behavior (i.e. early, late, did not file) among students attending community colleges, public 4-year, and private non-profit 4-year institutions. Results indicate that later filers, on average, receive less total state and institutional grant aid compared to students who filed earlier. Attending college part-time and delaying enrollment into college after high school were strongly associated with not filing a FAFSA and filing late. There were notable differences in FAFSA filing across institutional sectors as a function of students’ gender, race/ethnicity, income status, high school context, and pre-college academic experiences. These findings serve as the basis for recommendations aimed at increasing the rates of early FAFSA filing among students at the greatest risk of leaving money on the table.
This study reconsidered school effects on college enrollment by focusing on strategies that schools use to facilitate college transitions. It also examined whether school strategies influence different outcomes for students from different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Using data from the High School Effectiveness Study, the analysis identified three distinctive “college-linking” strategies: traditional, clearinghouse, and brokering. The results revealed that the strategies that schools use to help students navigate the college-linking process are associated with variation in college enrollment. They suggest that schools that operate primarily as a resource clearinghouse, in which organizational norms limit their role as agents in the college-linking process, foster significant racial/ethnic variation in students' outcomes.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This study analyzed predictors of fall-to-spring and fall-to-fall retention for 9,200 first-time-in-college students who enrolled in a community college over a four-year period. Findings highlight the impact of developmental education programs and internet-based courses on student persistence. Additional predictors include financial aid, parents' education, the number of semester hours enrolled in and dropped during the first fall semester, and participation in the Student Support Services program.
The main objective of this study is to test whether junior-level four-year college students who initially attended a community college have similar educational outcomes as college juniors who only attended a four-year college. The results suggest that there are no differences in the outcomes of community college transfers and rising juniors.
This study investigated how educational experiences between community college transfer students and native students differed at a four-year institution. The study sample included groups of native students and community college transfer students, who were further divided by timing of matriculation to the study institution. Benchmarks from National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) were used to assess the levels of students' collegiate experiences. After controlling for various explanatory variables, timing of matriculation to the senior institution showed significant differences in student engagement. Moreover, enrollment status, such as full- and part-time presented the largest effects on the levels of students' educational involvement regardless of student type.
Two-year colleges are an important part of the higher education system in the United States but there are concerns as to how attendance at these institutions affects educational attainment and labor market outcomes. This paper uses data from a nationally representative survey to examine the impact of students beginning their college career at a two-year college instead of a four-year college. Treatment effects are estimated using both standard regression techniques as well as propensity score matching. As these estimates may be contaminated because of selection on unobservable characteristics this paper will also employ a number of sensitivity analyses to consider the potential bias. The results show large negative impacts on both educational attainment and labor market outcomes for men and women who begin at a two-year college, even for those students who expect to complete a bachelor's degree. The evidence from the sensitivity analyses suggest that to eliminate these large effects there would need to be substantial, and arguably implausible, selection on unobservable characteristics.
Propensity score methodology can be used to help design observational studies in a way analogous to the way randomized experiments are designed: without seeing any answers involving outcome variables. The typical models used to analyze observational data (e.g., least squares regressions, difference of difference methods) involve outcomes, and so cannot be used for design in this sense. Because the propensity score is a function only of covariates, not outcomes, repeated analyses attempting to balance covariate distributions across treatment groups do not bias estimates of the treatment effect on outcome variables. This theme will the primary focus of this article: how to use the techniques of matching, subclassification and/or weighting to help design observational studies. The article also proposes a new diagnostic table to aid in this endeavor, which is especially useful when there are many covariates under consideration. The conclusion of the initial design phase may be that the treatment and control groups are too far apart to produce reliable effect estimates without heroic modeling assumptions. In such cases, it may be wisest to abandon the intended observational study, and search for a more acceptable data set where such heroic modeling assumptions are not necessary. The ideas and techniques will be illustrated using the initial design of an observational study for use in the tobacco litigation based on the NMES data set.
Rouse [Rouse, C. E. (1995). Democratization or diversion—the effect of community-colleges on educational-attainment. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 13(2), 217–224] finds that enrollment in a community college may divert students from attaining a bachelor's degree. However, this result may be due to selection bias, as the population of community college students should be quite different from those who attend 4-year institutions in terms of both observable and unobservable characteristics. This study uses propensity score matching to non-parametrically balance a data set from the 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Students survey in order to overcome issues associated with selection bias. Results from a Cox proportional hazards model indicate that attendance at a community college lowers the hazard rate for completing a bachelor's degree. The results are consistent with previous studies.
This paper provides new estimates of the ‘diversion effect’ argument advanced by critics of community colleges. As emphasized by Rouse (J. Business Econ. Statist. 13 (1995) 217), information on students' desired level of schooling is essential to properly measure the diversion effect of community colleges as well as their ‘democratization effect’ increasing access to higher education. Using information on desired years of schooling from early waves of the NLSY, we find that the choice between alternative postsecondary education tracks including the choice of community college students between transfer and terminal programs is highly sensitive to years of desired schooling. Diversion effect estimates are also found to depend on whether we condition on desired schooling. For individuals who express a desire to complete at least 16 years of schooling, our diversion effect estimates lie between −0.7 and −1.0 years. These estimates are clearly dominated by positive democratization effect estimates. On balance, therefore, we find for individuals desiring a bachelor's degree that community colleges increase average educational attainment by between 0.4 and 1.0 years.
Although published works rarely include causal estimates from more than a few model specifications, authors usually choose
the presented estimates from numerous trial runs readers never see. Given the often large variation in estimates across choices
of control variables, functional forms, and other modeling assumptions, how can researchers ensure that the few estimates
presented are accurate or representative? How do readers know that publications are not merely demonstrations that it is possible to find a specification that fits the author's favorite hypothesis? And how do we evaluate or even define statistical properties
like unbiasedness or mean squared error when no unique model or estimator even exists? Matching methods, which offer the promise
of causal inference with fewer assumptions, constitute one possible way forward, but crucial results in this fast-growing
methodological literature are often grossly misinterpreted. We explain how to avoid these misinterpretations and propose a
unified approach that makes it possible for researchers to preprocess data with matching (such as with the easy-to-use software
we offer) and then to apply the best parametric techniques they would have used anyway. This procedure makes parametric models
produce more accurate and considerably less model-dependent causal inferences.
By comparing experimental and propensity-score impact estimates of dropout prevention programs, we examine whether propensity-score methods produce unbiased estimates of program impacts. We find no consistent evidence that such methods replicate experimental impacts in our setting. This finding holds even when the data available for matching are extensive. Our findings suggest that evaluators who plan to use nonexperimental methods, such as propensity-score matching, need to consider carefully how programs recruit individuals and why individuals enter programs, as unobserved factors may exert powerful influences on outcomes that are not easily captured using nonexperimental methods. Copyright (c) 2004 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Propensity score matching (PSM) has become a popular approach to estimate causal treatment effects. It is widely applied when evaluating labour market policies, but empirical examples can be found in very diverse fields of study. Once the researcher has decided to use PSM, he is confronted with a lot of questions regarding its implementation. To begin with, a first decision has to be made concerning the estimation of the propensity score. Following that one has to decide which matching algorithm to choose and determine the region of common support. Subsequently, the matching quality has to be assessed and treatment effects and their standard errors have to be estimated. Furthermore, questions like 'what to do if there is choice-based sampling?' or 'when to measure effects?' can be important in empirical studies. Finally, one might also want to test the sensitivity of estimated treatment effects with respect to unobserved heterogeneity or failure of the common support condition. Each implementation step involves a lot of decisions and different approaches can be thought of. The aim of this paper is to discuss these implementation issues and give some guidance to researchers who want to use PSM for evaluation purposes. Copyright 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
This paper estimates the impact of community colleges on educational attainment. Community colleges attract those who might not have otherwise attended college (democratization); they also attract students who might otherwise have attended a four-year college (diversion). The effect of democratization on educational attainment is nonnegative; the effect of diversion is unclear. The author uses community college accessibility to instrument for the type of college attended. The results suggest that two-year college students diverted from a four-year college complete fewer years of education. Overall, however, community colleges increase total years of schooling, but do not change the likelihood of attaining a bachelor's degree.
Beginning postsecondary students study 12/17 (BPS:12/17): Data file documentation
- M Bryan
- D Cooney
- B Elliott
The economy goes to college: The hidden promise of higher education in the post-industrial service economy
- A P Carnevale
- S J Rose
High school longitudinal study of 2009 (HSLS:09): A first look at the postsecondary transcripts and student financial aid records of fall 2009 ninth-graders
- X Chen
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