Working Paper: NBER ID: w25479
Authors: Caroline M. Hoxby; Sarah Turner
Abstract: In identifying whether universities provide opportunities for low-income students, there is a measurement challenge: different institutions face students with different incomes and preparation. We show how a hypothetical university's “relevant pool”–the students from whom it could plausibly draw–affects popular measures: the Pell share, Bottom Quintile share, and Intergenerational Mobility. Using a proof by contradiction, we demonstrate that universities ranked highly on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately few low-income students. We also show the reverse: universities slated for penalties on the popular measures can actually serve disproportionately many low-income students. Furthermore, the Intergenerational Mobility measure penalizes universities that face relatively equal income distributions, which are probably good for low-income students, and rewards universities that face very unequal income distributions. In short, by confounding differences in university effort with differences in circumstances, the popular measures could distort university decision making and produce unintended consequences. We demonstrate that, with well-thought-out data analysis, it is possible to create benchmarks that actually measure what they are intended to measure. In particular, we present a measure that overcomes the deficiencies of the popular measures and is informative about all, not just low-income, students.
Keywords: Higher education; Low-income students; Opportunity measurement
JEL Codes: H0; H75; I20; I22; I23; I24; I32
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| University ranking on popular measures of opportunity (Pell share, bottom quintile share) (I24) | Actual enrollment of low-income students (I24) |
| Penalties on university measures (C19) | Actual enrollment of low-income students (I24) |
| Equal income distributions in universities (D39) | Ranking on intergenerational mobility measure (J62) |
| University measures of opportunity (I24) | University decision-making (I23) |