I’m very happy to share that I will be joining the University of South Carolina as an Assistant Professor of Economics this fall!

I’m excited to be at #APPAM2023 @appam.bsky.social! Catch me presenting my JMP on college transfer at 8:30am on Saturday in the panel “Returns to Investment in Postsecondary Education” and discussing more higher ed work in panels this afternoon and Saturday afternoon (details in pics!)

Thank you! Yes and no - TX does have a pretty decentralized transfer system, which can lead to more information and transfer frictions for students. On the other hand, qual work has found transfer students face barriers in a variety of contexts. Some of it is summarized in this para from my paper:

I also find persistent negative returns for 4-yr students who transfer to flagship colleges.

These negative impacts are persistent and not driven by transfer students spending additional time in college - they are largest 11-15 years after transfer.

However, I find negative earnings returns 2-yr college students marginally admitted for transfer to 4-yr colleges.

Among 2-yr students who apply to transfer to 4-yrs and 4-yr students who apply to transfer to nonflagship 4-yrs, those narrowly accepted are significantly more likely to earn a BA degree than those narrowly denied.

I recenter & pool these detected cutoffs then use them as instrument for transfer in RD design to estimate effects of being narrowly granted transfer admission relative to applying for transfer and being narrowly rejected.

Lots of 4-yr colleges use college GPA cutoffs in transfer admissions, often without making them public. I build on methods from Porter & Yu (2015) to estimate institution-year-specific GPA cutoffs at from applications + admissions data at 4-yr TX public colleges.