Every Little Bit Counts: The Impact of High-speed Internet on the Transition to College

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of high-speed Internet on students' college application decisions. We link the diffusion of zip code-level residential broadband Internet to millions of PSAT and SAT takers' college testing and application outcomes and find that students with access to high-speed Internet in their junior year of high school perform better on the SAT and apply to a higher number and more expansive set of colleges. Effects appear to be concentrated among higher-SES students, indicating that while, on average, high-speed Internet improved students' postsecondary outcomes, it may have increased pre-existing inequities by primarily benefiting those with more resources.

Student Responsiveness to Earnings Data in the College Scorecard

“…Similarly, timing of disclosure has been shown to impact consumer responsiveness (Della Vigna and Pollet ), and whether a September 12 release date, which coincided with the beginning of the school year, was timed properly to garner enough attention from the media or students is an open question. Finally, even if students have preferences for the metrics presented on the Scorecard, they may lack awareness of the Scorecard or not have enough time to access these data, which may be particularly true for traditionally underserved students (e.g., Dettling, Goodman, and Smith Forthcoming; Haskins, Holzer, and Lerman ).…”

The Effect of Lower Transaction Costs on Social Security Disability Insurance Application Rates and Participation

“…While the introduction of online and telephone-based application processes for Unemployment Insurance (UI) has not been shown to significantly affect UI take-up or change the composition of UI applicants (Ebenstein & Stange, 2010), the increased availability of electronic tax filing increases participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) (Kopczuk & Pop Eleches, 2007). Other work has found that high-speed internet access increases college preparation and application activity for high-SES high school students (Dettling et al, 2018), and increases labor supply among married women (Dettling, 2016).…”

“…The count of internet providers captures the extent of variation in the supply of high-speed internet access, which was the main constraint on access during the time frame of our analysis. 6 Other research has also demonstrated the count of internet providers as an effective measure of internet access (Dettling et al, 2018;Iyengar & Westwood, 2015). The FCC Form 477 collects records of the number of high-speed internet service providers with over 250 high-speed residential lines at the zip code or county level, depending on the year.…”

“…As internet prevalence has increased, the suppression rates have declined: by 2008, only 9.6 percent of zip codes had zero providers. As noted by Dettling et al (2018), there is not a strong correspondence between zip code-level counts of high-speed internet service providers and population, and therefore we adapt the strategy in Dettling et al (2018) and construct measures of connectivity scaled by county population size. Furthermore, our data on SSDI application is at the county level, thus requiring consistent data at the county level for estimation.…”

“…For a discussion of this assumption, seeDettling et al (2018); also seeFaulhaber (2002);Greenstein and Prince (2006); andGrubesic and Murray (2002).…”