Post-Secondary Enrollment Decisions of High School Students: The Effect of Socioeconomic Status

Thumbnail Image

Files

Romberger, Madalyn Honors Economics Thesis.pdf (975.08 KB)

Links to Files

Permanent Link

http://hdl.handle.net/11603/21440

Collections

Goucher College Undergraduate Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2021-05-01

Type of Work

senior honors thesis
Text

Department

Center for People, Politics & Markets - Economics

Program

Bachelor's Degree

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.
Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States

Subjects

socioeconomic status
college choice
student decision
Education Longitudinal Study (ELS)
post-secondary enrollment
free lunch program

Abstract

Discrepancies exist in the type of students who attend, and graduate from, post-secondary institutions. This study investigates the impact of socioeconomic status on students' enrollment decisions using the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002). Using an ordinary least square (OLS) model specif cation, attendance is regressed against a combination of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The findings reveal that the statistical significance of the independent variables changes based on the inclusion of school income or parental income categories. Differences were observed among sex, race, standardized test scores, student work hours, and parental educational attainment variables.