College Choice in Broader Social, Political, and Legal Context

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Colleges and universities are often conceptualized as insulated environments governed by academic and institutional dynamics. However, this panel highlights how higher education institutions are embedded within and shaped by broader social, political, and legal contexts. By examining how these external pressures affect college choice, student well-being, and attainment, this panel challenges the notion of higher education as a self-contained system. Instead, it positions colleges as responsive to the same societal challenges faced by the public. This perspective is particularly relevant for a public policy audience, as it underscores the importance of designing policies that account for the interconnected environments in which students and institutions operate. While only the fourth paper directly assesses variation in state policy, all four papers leverage national variation across higher education institutions to study issues relevant to state-level policy.

The first paper examines how students’ perceptions of campus political climates shape college-going expectations. In a context of growing ideological sorting across campuses, this study asks whether students make decisions based on accurate assessments of institutional political environments or misperceptions about where they would belong. Using an original national survey experiment, the paper provides new evidence on how beliefs about campus ideology influence expected admissions and enrollment, and whether correcting those beliefs can broaden students’ college consideration sets. It shows that political context matters not only because it exists, but because students interpret and respond to it when making decisions about where to apply and enroll.

The second paper shifts attention from political context to social violence, examining how campus gun violence affects institutional outcomes. Linking incident-level data on campus shootings to administrative data from IPEDS, it estimates the effects of these events on applications, admissions, enrollment, and retention. The paper demonstrates that acts of violence occurring on campus can alter institutional trajectories and student choices, underscoring how broader social violence can impact higher education.

The third paper explores another form of external and institutional disruption: public reports of faculty sexual misconduct. Rather than focusing solely on institutional scandals or faculty consequences, it examines how these incidents affect students’ academic pathways. Using a stacked event-study design, the authors show that public revelations of field-specific faculty sexual misconduct reduce degree completion in the affected field, particularly in the post-2015 period. The paper highlights how legal, cultural, and organizational responses to misconduct can shape students’ persistence and field of study, with implications for gender segregation and long-run opportunity.

The final paper examines state merit aid programs as a policy lever that shapes college choice and long-run outcomes. Exploiting staggered adoption of merit aid across states, it finds that these programs shift students toward in-state enrollment and away from out-of-state options, often toward less selective institutions, without improving educational attainment or long-run residence. The results further suggest negative labor market consequences for some groups, especially women. This paper brings the policy dimension of the panel into sharp focus by showing that government efforts to influence college choice can have meaningful but uneven consequences for students’ educational and economic trajectories.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Sarah Reber, Brookings Institution

Discussants

• Joshua Goodman, Boston University

• Samantha Kane, Brown University

Organizer

• Cecilia Rodriguez Ingold, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Do (Mis)Perceptions of Campus Political Climates Affect College Choices? - Presenting Author: Riley Kaitlin Acton, Bowdoin College

• Gun Violence on College Campuses and its Impact on Institutional Outcomes - Presenting Author: Cecilia Rodriguez Ingold, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• The Consequences of Faculty Sexual Misconduct - Presenting Author: Katherine Leu, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

• State Merit Aid: Distortionary Effects on Labor Market and Fiscal Outcomes - Presenting Author: Cameron Conrad, RAND Corporation