States differ substantially in higher education policies. Little is known about the effects of state policies on the performance of public colleges and universities, largely because no clear measures of college quality exist. In this paper, I estimate the average quality of public colleges of US states based on the value-added to individuals' early career earnings. I explicitly deal with the problem of self-selection in both where to go to college and where to work. I find considerable variation in the quality of states' public college systems. Using this quality measure, I then explore how various aspects of state higher education policy are associated with college outcomes. I find that states with better faculty quality and with more diversity among public colleges tend to have higher value-added to student earnings. (Contains 6 tables, 1 figure and 20 notes.)