While there is wide agreement that leaders matter, little is known regarding the role that human capital plays in determining who becomes one. We exploit unique attributes of the higher education industry to examine if training and academic ability affect the placement of university presidents within the research hierarchy of U.S. institutions.…

We use aggregate PISA data for 19 countries over the period 2000-2009 to study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling the share of immigrant pupils in secondary schools from…

Using data for 108 colleges in the California Community College System, this paper poses two questions. First, do California community colleges differ in their missions? Second, if they do, can inter-college differences in missions be explained? We address the first question by developing college-specific measures of curriculum mix, which we use…

Private institutions of higher education are highly dependent on alumni support to cover operating expenses, fund endowments and fuel large capital campaigns. For example, in 2004, alumni at private liberal arts colleges generated nearly 43% of total voluntary support and funded 21.5% of total institutional expenditures. This paper uses 15 years…

Teachers are more likely to be found in rural communities and low-wage metropolitan areas than are college-educated workers in other occupations. This analysis explores the extent to which the geographic distribution of teachers explains the relatively low average wage found in other studies. The analysis suggests that excluding geographic…

Using data on 4 years of courses at American University, regression results show that actual grades have a significant, positive effect on student evaluations of teaching (SETs), controlling for expected grade and fixed effects for both faculty and courses, and for possible endogeneity. Implications are that the SET is a faulty measure of teaching…

Youth who share a school and neighborhood often show similar levels of academic achievement, but some studies find all or most of this correlation is due to sorting (not causation). We analyze the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) in three ways to decompose sorting versus causality: We first control for much richer measures of family…

College students select majors for a variety of reasons, including expected returns in the labor market. This paper demonstrates an empirical method linking a census of US degrees and fields of study with measures of the knowledge content of jobs. The study combines individual wage and employment data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) with…

This paper asks whether high school leadership activities play an important role in explaining the Hispanic college-completion gap. The analysis in this paper considers the role that English language fluency plays in a Hispanic student's leadership probability and in the student's future educational success. The main results in this paper are:…

The positive impact of education on earnings, wages, and economic growth is well documented; however, the issue of education-occupation matching in developing countries has been largely ignored. Since workers' levels of schooling and their occupations' required level of education both affect wages, policymakers may find it useful to note if such…

The education literature provides numerous estimates of community college diversion and democratization effects measured in terms of educational attainment. Kane and Rouse [J Econ Pers 13 (1999) 64] suggest testing for diversion by comparing the impacts of two-year and four-year colleges on the changes in educational aspirations that underlie…

The federal role in education finance is commonly seen as compensatory. The federal government gives large sums of money to low-income schools and school districts through programs such as Title 1. Yet, this view of federal aid is based solely on direct educational expenditures. The federal government and state governments also support schools…

Drawing on empirical studies from five countries (Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, United Kingdom, and United States), over 2 decades, outlines irregularities in the incidence of over- and under-education and consequences for individual earnings. The overall incidence of overeducation in the labor market is about 26 percent. (Contains 33 references.)…

By 1997, the New York State Board of Regents had required that all students take rigorous Regents exams to graduate from public high schools. A research symposium was called to examine financial system changes necessary for implementing standards and high-stakes tests. Other states' approaches are summarized. (MLH)

Summarizes the literature on twins-based estimations of schooling returns. Examines implications of endogenous determination of which twin goes to school longer and of measuring schooling with error. Twin-based estimation may complement other methodologies, but is vulnerable to the same inconsistency that afflicts conventional cross-sectional…