Grads on the Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets for Graduates / Johnathan G. Conzelmann, Steven W. Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn M. Martin, Andrew Simon, Kevin M. Stange.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Conzelmann, Johnathan G.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Hemelt, Steven W.

Hershbein, Brad.

Martin, Shawn M.

Simon, Andrew.

Stange, Kevin M.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30088.

NBER working paper series no. w30088

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4-year institutions as for 2-year institutions. However, more than one-quarter of 2-year institutions disperse alumni more diversely than the average public 4-year institution. In one application of these data, we find that the average strength of the labor market to which a college sends its graduates predicts college-specific intergenerational economic mobility. In a second application, we quantify the extent of "brain drain" across areas and illustrate the importance of considering migration patterns of college graduates when estimating the social return on public investment in higher education.

Notes:

Print version record

May 2022.