High School Curricular Intensity and College Entry

• In Event: Tracking, Labeling, and Sorting

Abstract

This paper examines changes in the relationship between students’ high school curricular intensity and their early college outcomes for three cohorts. Students with higher curricular intensity were more likely to enter postsecondary education and less likely to delay postsecondary entry in each cohort, despite educational expansion. Students with higher curricular intensity also were less likely to enter 2-year or for-profit institutions—increasingly so across cohorts despite large enrollment growth in both types of institutions over the period of study. The change in odds of each outcome associated with a 1-unit increase in curricular intensity is one-third to one-half the size of the change in odds associated with going from the lowest parental income or education to the highest.

Author

• Megan Austin, American Institutes for Research