The Promises and Pitfalls of Measuring Community College Quality
In this paper we explore the community college (institutional) effect on student outcomes in the nation’s largest public two-year higher education system—the California Community College system.
In this paper we explore the community college (institutional) effect on student outcomes in the nation’s largest public two-year higher education system—the California Community College system. We investigate whether there are significant differences in student outcomes across community college campuses after adjusting for observed student differences and potential unobserved determinates that drive selection. To do so, we leverage a unique administrative dataset that links community college students to their K–12 records in order to control for key student inputs. We find meaningful differences in student outcomes across California’s Community Colleges, after adjusting for differences in student inputs. We also compare college rankings based on unadjusted mean differences with college rankings adjusted for student inputs. Our results suggest that policymakers wishing to rank schools based on quality should adjust such rankings for differences in student-level inputs across campuses.
Read the Full Paper
This paper was originally published by The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Economic Dynamism
Defending Technological Dynamism & the Freedom to Innovate in the Age of AI
Human flourishing, economic growth, and geopolitical resilience requires innovation—especially in artificial intelligence.
Partisan Trust in the Federal Reserve
This paper examines partisanship in public perceptions of the Federal Reserve.
It’s Not Easy, but We Can All Learn to Think like Adam Smith
To truly understand what a dynamic economy requires, we would do well to recover the 18th-century sensibility that understood dynamism as a social and cultural phenomenon as much as an economic one.
Locked Out of the Dream: Regulation Making Homes Unaffordable Around the World
The first in a two-part series on the global housing crisis.
.webp)
.webp)
American Aspiration – a Blueprint
We need to refocus on what prosperity produces and requires at the level of ordinary, individual people trying to make their way to that better version of themselves that only they can achieve.
Today’s Upside-Down Preference for Wind over Natural Gas
Trump is right to push for his safe pipeline; Hochul should abandon her dangerous wind farms.
.webp)
