Excellence in Research: A Comparison of Educational Outcomes at Institutions of Higher Education

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A significant proportion of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) baccalaureates earned by Black/African-American students in the US is awarded by Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This proposed research will combine several administrative data sets and a new methodology to estimate the effects of HBCU attendance on graduation rates in STEM subjects, graduation rates generally, and the probability of attending graduate school after the baccalaureate, relative to attending a non-HBCU institution. The investigators will also study why some students succeed better in an HBCU compared to a non-HBCU institution. This is an important contribution to economic science and labor market policy as the US tries to broaden and increase its STEM workforce.This proposal will merge a series of large, detailed, administrative data sets and use a new methodology to estimate the causal effects of HBCU attendance on a series of outcomes. Specifically, it will investigate three interrelated issues: the causal effect of attending an HBCU on (i) the probability of graduating with a STEM degree, (ii) graduation rates, and (iii) attending graduate school after graduating with a STEM baccalaureate degree. The PIs will adopt a recently developed methodology by Hoxby and model HBCU attendance as part of Black students' human capital decisions. Instead of the traditional methodology based on propensity score matching in these studies, the proposed study will use the new and more robust methodology that controls for selection and heterogeneity to estimate these student outcomes. The work is based on a matched data set from the College Board and National Student Clearinghouse. This merged data set and methodology, not used before, will allow the researchers to control for heterogeneity of HBCUs in the study. The results of this research will advance knowledge on the contribution of HBCUs to human capital formation in the US.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.