Race and College Success: Evidence from Missouri / Peter Arcidiacono, Cory Koedel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Arcidiacono, Peter.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Koedel, Cory.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w19188.

NBER working paper series no. w19188

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2013.

Summary:

Conditional on enrollment, African American students are substantially less likely to graduate from 4-year public universities than white students. Using administrative micro data from Missouri, we decompose the graduation gap between African Americans and whites into four factors: (1) racial differences in how students sort to universities, (2) racial differences in how students sort to initial majors, (3) racial differences in school quality prior to entry, and (4) racial differences in other observed pre-entry skills. Pre-entry skills explain 65 and 86 percent of the gap for women and men respectively. A small role is found for differential sorting into college, particularly for women, and this is driven by African Americans being disproportionately represented at urban schools and the schools at the very bottom of the quality distribution.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2013.