In this study, authors Jonathan Smith (of the College Board) and Kevin Stange (University of Michigan) use PSAT scores from 2004 and 2005 and enrollment and completion data from the National Student Clearinghouse to estimate the contribution of “peer effects” to community college outcomes and to the documented gap between the bachelor’s degree completion rates of students who enroll at two-year versus four-year institutions.
Interestingly, they find considerable overlap between average PSAT scores at two- and four-year colleges (though the study doesn’t include older students or those attending for-profit institutions), suggesting that many students choose the former for financial reasons rather than academic ones. This is unfortunate, because they also find that students are thirty percentage points less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree if they enroll at a two-year college—even after their academic abilities and those of their peers are taken into account. This means that our current policy of making two-year colleges cheaper than their four-year counterparts may inadvertently lower some students’ odds of earning a bachelor’s degree.
According to the authors, roughly 40 percent of the degree attainment gap can be explained by average peer quality (which is lower at two-year schools); the rest is attributable to a combination of structural barriers (such as the difficulty of transferring credits from two- to four-year institutions) and a student’s own academic ability. Furthermore, though the academic ability of one’s peers matters most at four-year schools (perhaps because students there are more likely to live on campus with student roommates and enroll full-time), it also affects degree attainment at two-year colleges. Regardless of the institution, insufficiently prepared classmates lead to fewer graduates.
So what to make of this? Should we rethink open enrollment policies at community colleges, where the student body’s secondary school achievement is comparatively low? Perhaps we’d see more students succeed (not just a higher percentage) if we admitted fewer unprepared men and women in the first place, instead directing them down alternative paths like career academies and apprenticeships. Such a policy might not be popular, but it’s worthy of further research.
SOURCE: Jonathan Smith and Kevin Stange, "A New Measure of College Quality to Study the Effects of the College Sector and Peers on Degree Attainment," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 21605 (October 2015).
