Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete a baccalaureate degree. However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at a two-year institution. This paper examines how the outcomes of community college entrants compare to similar students who initially entered four-year institutions within the Ohio public higher education system. Using a detailed dataset, we track outcomes for nine years and employ multiple strategies to deal with selection issues: propensity score matching and instrumental variables. The results suggest that straightforward estimates are significantly biased, but even after accounting for selection, students who initially begin at a community college were 14.5 percent less likely to complete a bachelor's degree within nine years.

This chapter explores the factors influencing Latino college choice and finds that even when we control for socioeconomic background, academic preparation, and degree intention, Latinos are more likely than white or African American students to begin postsecondary study at community colleges than at four‐year institutions.

Career technical education (CTE) programs at community colleges are increasingly seen as an attractive alternative to four-year colleges, yet little systematic evidence exists on the returns to specific certificates and degrees. We estimate returns to CTE programs using administrative data from the California Community College system linked to earnings records. We employ estimation approaches including individual fixed effects and individual-specific trends, and find average returns to CTE certificate and degrees that range from 14 to 45 percent. The largest returns are for programs in the healthcare sector; estimated returns in non-health related programs range from 15 to 23 percent.

for help with the data. Eric Bettinger provided invaluable support during the project. All opinions and mistakes are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

A number of public school districts in the United States have adopted income-based integration policiespolicies that use measures of family income or socioeconomic status-in determining school assignment. Some scholars and policymakers contend that such policies will also reduce racial segregation. In this article this assumption is explored by computing upper and lower bounds on the possible and probable levels of racial segregation that would result from race-neutral income-based school assignment policies. The article finds that, in general, income integration is no guarantee of even modest racial desegregation. In particular, the extent of ancillary racial integration produced by an income-integration policy will depend on the size of racial income disparities within a given district, the specifics of an income-integration policy, and the patterns of racial and socioeconomic residential segregation in a school district. Data on racial income inequality and income segregation in urban districts throughout the United States indicate that very high levels of racial segregation are possible under any practical income-integration policy. The authors conclude that, given the extent of residential racial segregation in the United States, it is unlikely that race-neutral income-integration policies will significantly reduce school racial segregation, although there is reason to believe that such policies are likely to have other beneficial effects on schooling.