Why Have College Completion Rates Declined? An Analysis of Changing Student Preparation and Collegiate Resources

By John Bound, Michael F. Lovenheim, Sarah Turner. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2010

673 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Rising college enrollment over the last quarter century has not been met with a proportional increase in college completion. Comparing the high school classes of 1972 and 1992, we show declines in college completion rates have been most pronounced for men who first enroll in less selective public universities and community colleges. We decompose the decline into the components due to changes in preparedness of entering students and due to changes in collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student. While both factors play some role, the supply-side characteristics are most important in explaining changes in college completion. (JEL I23)

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/25704518e5107410c0662a0c2f2cce890c69fd37

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

Early Integration and Other Outcomes for Community College Transfer Students (2014, background): “In a look at Tinto’s (1975) Student Integration Model, Chapman and Pascarella (1983) considered institution type to explore the relevance of academic and social integration among these different populations.”
Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Childhood Investments on Postsecondary Attainment and Degree Completion. NBER Working Paper No. 17533. (2011, unknown): “Inequality in postsecondary education has increased in recent decades, with the gap in attendance between those born into lower-income and higher-income families expanding (Bound et al., 2009; Bailey and Dynarski, 2011).”
A Crisis in Student Loans?: How Changes in the Characteristics of Borrowers and in the Institutions They Attended Contributed to Rising Loan Defaults (2015, background): “For example, see Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner (2010).”
The Impact of Price Caps and Spending Cuts on U.S. Postsecondary Attainment (2017, unknown): “…our results relate to studies of “cohort crowding” and college quality, which draw linkages between changes in college resources, declining completion rates and increased time to degree over the last twenty years (Turner, 2004; Dynarski, 2008; Bound and Turner, 2007; Bound et al., 2010, 2012).”
Access to 4-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion (2017, background): “…extent to which postsecondary institutional factors explain dropping college completion rates among US college enrollers (Belley and Lochner 2007; Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner 2010; Bailey and Dynarski 2011); the relative importance of “ match ” quality versus absolute quality (Dillon and Smith…”
The Impact of Tuition Increases on Enrollment at Public Colleges and Universities (2011, background): “Bound, Lovenheim, and Turner (2010) examined initial enrollment decisions of students from the 1970s and 1990s and find important shifts toward less selective postsecondary institutions, where student support and completion rates are lower.”