Does State Allocation of University Funding Mitigate Effectively Maintained Inequality?

• In Event: State Policy and Educational Equity

Abstract

Drawing on Effectively Maintained Inequality, I ask whether Wisconsin’s unequal pattern of appropriations across its public universities exacerbates economic disparities in college persistence. I test two hypotheses: (1) Economically advantaged students sort into high-appropriation universities; (2) Appropriations promote first-to-second-year persistence. Applying a generalized difference-in-difference strategy to population-level data in Wisconsin, I find support for hypothesis (1) but not hypothesis (2).

Author

• Christian Michael Smith, University of California - Merced