Abstract
This paper examines the impact of attending different categories of selective institutions on students’ college completion. Specifically, it explores differences in the impact that selectivity of an institution has by race and ethnicity. The analysis accounts for the impact of individual and institutional characteristics and corrects for omitted variables with proxies for student motivation. The results suggest that students who attend the most selective institutions and highly selective institutions, as opposed to non-selective ones, are more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree. This result holds for African American and Hispanic students. After correcting for the problem of sorting of students into specific types of institutions, the results of the models suggest that the coefficient of selective institutions might have a small upward bias. The positive effect of selective institutions on attainment suggests that they have the potential to increase the graduation rates of minorities while narrowing the persistent college completion gap.
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Notes
In this paper, minorities refers mainly to African American and Hispanic students. This term does not include Asians, whose educational outcomes are more similar to those of Whites.
Estimates of college completion rates vary widely, depending on definitions, sample specifications, reporting methods, and other factors. Completion can be defined as attainment of a bachelor’s degree or 4 years of college. Also, studies vary in the length of time allowed for completion: 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, or more. Some studies include only full-time students, while others include both full-time and part-time students. Some measure completion at the institution first entered, while others measure completion at any college (Boesel and Fredland 1999). Given the substantial variation in completion rates according to the definition used, I decided to report the Census information that illustrates the completion gap between minorities and Whites for the total population ages 25–29.
There are a number of possible definitions and measures of institutional quality (see Literature Review section). In this study, institutional quality refers to having a selective admission policy. It is measured by the average SAT scores of the entering freshmen class. The assumption is that quality increases with selectivity. The terms “institutional quality” and “institutional selectivity” are used interchangeably.
This measure is available from the Barron’s Profiles of American College and Universities and Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS). For comparison purposes with previous literature, this study uses the selectivity measure and categories of selectivity developed by Barron’s.
The majority of the literature in economics focuses on what impact the quality of the postsecondary institution a student attends has on their future earnings. Even though the focus of this paper is on graduation rates, some of the studies on earnings are reviewed because they use methodological strategies that correct for the selection problem. These strategies were later applied to the graduation stage. The studies reviewed below focus, when possible, on studies that have tested the impact on college completion.
For a more detailed description of Profiles of American Colleges, see Barron’s (1999[K1]).
Barron’s uses the term competitive instead of selective to define the different categories. However, the categories were renamed for purposes of language consistency (Barron’s 1999).
The models were also run for the two categories of minorities separately. The results for the Hispanic sample were consistent and the coefficient for the most and highly selective category was also statistically significant. This was not the case for African Americans. In their case, the only significant effect was for the model that included five categories of selectivity. There was a positive and significant effect for African American students who attended highly selective institutions (1,240–1,309). Results available from the author upon request.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Martin Carnoy, Susanna Loeb, Myra Strober, Anthony Antonio and Edward Vytlacil for their generous advice. Special thanks to all the participants of the Economics of Education seminar at Stanford University. I am also grateful to Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Amaury Nora, Michael Olivas and the rest of participants of the Houston Education Finance Round Table. Additionally, I would like to thank Estela Bensimon, Alicia Dowd, Greg Kienzl, Mariana Alfonso, Liang Zang, Sara Raab, Josipa Roksa and William G. Tierney for their comments on the most recent version of this paper. I also benefited from the generous and insightful guidance of two anonymous reviewers and the editor. This research was supported by a grant from the American Education Research Association which receives funds for its “AERA Grants Program” from the National Center of Education Statistics and the Office of Education Sciences (U.S Department of Education), and the National Science Foundation under NSF Grant #REC-9980573. Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.
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Melguizo, T. Quality Matters: Assessing the Impact of Attending More Selective Institutions on College Completion Rates of Minorities. Res High Educ 49, 214–236 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-007-9076-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-007-9076-1