Long-Run Educational Attainment E ects of Local Colleges: Evidence from the Establishment of US Colleges

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2021-02-16

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Lauren Russell, Lei Yu and Michael J. Andrews, Long-Run Educational Attainment E ects of Local Colleges: Evidence from the Establishment of U.S. Colleges, https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.edu/dist/0/610/files/2021/02/PaperDraft_CollegeLocationsEdAttainment.pdf

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Abstract

We study the e ects of a college on local education attainment using historical college establishment experiments in which "runner-up" locations were strongly considered to become college sites but ultimately not chosen for as-good-as-random reasons. While losing counties have since had opportunity to establish their own colleges, we show that winners have more years of exposure to a college over their history and are more likely to have a college today. Using this variation, we find that winners have 14 percentage points higher contemporary rates of bachelor's and graduate degree attainment. This educational attainment gap has widened over time