Changes in the College Mobility Pipeline Since 1900

• In Event: Shaping Student Success in Higher Education: Family Engagement, Instructor Quality, Financial Aid, and Institutional Constraints

Abstract

Going to college has consistently conferred a large wage premium. We show that the relative premium received by lower-income college-goers has halved since 1960. We decompose the steady rise in 'collegiate regressivity' using dozens of survey and administrative datasets that document 1900--2020 wage premiums and the composition and value-added of collegiate institutions and majors. Three factors explain two-thirds of the trend. First, the less-selective and public institutions that disproportionately enroll lower-income students have declined in economic value. Second, lower-income students have become increasingly over-represented in America's shrinking community college and for-profit sectors since 1980. Third, higher-income students' falling humanities enrollment and expanding computer science enrollment since 2000 has increased their degrees' value. Changes in selection into college-going and selection across four-year universities are second-order. College-going provided equitable returns before 1960, but collegiate regressivity has curtailed American higher education's potential to reduce inequality and mediates 25 percent of intergenerational income transmission.

Author

• Zachary Bleemer, Princeton University
  Presenting Author