NBER Publications by Jeffrey Groen

Doctoral programs in the humanities and related social sciences are characterized by high attrition and long times-to-degree. In response to these problems, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) to improve the quality of graduate programs and in turn reduce attrition and shorten times-to-degree. Over a 10-year period starting in 1991, the Foundation provided a total of over $80 million to 51 departments at 10 major research universities. We estimate the impact of the GEI on attrition rates and times-to-degree using competing risk duration models and student-level data. The data span the start of the GEI and include information for students at a set of control departments. We estimate that the GEI had modest impacts on student outcomes in the expe...

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided over $80 million to 51 treatment departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. Using survey data collected from students who entered the treatment and 50 control departments during a 15 year period that spanned the start of the GEI, we use factor analysis to group multiple aspects of PhD programs into a smaller number of characteristics and then estimate which aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these different aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. From these analyses, we identify the routes via which the GEI influenced attrition and graduation rates and also indicate which aspects of PhD programs departments should c...

This paper examines the divergence of interest between universities and state governments concerning standards for admitting in-state versus out-of-state students. States have an interest in using universities to attract and retain high ability individuals because they pay higher taxes and contribute more to economic development. In contrast, universities have an interest in their graduates being successful, but little interest in where students come from or where they go after graduation. We develop and test a model that illustrates the divergence of interest between universities and their states. We find that public universities set lower minimum admissions standards for in-state than out-of-state applicants, presumably following their states' preferences, while private universities on a...

The main question addressed in this analysis is how the production of undergraduate and graduate education at the state level affects the local stock of university-educated workers. The potential mobility of highly skilled workers implies that the number of college students graduating in an area need not affect the number of college graduates living in the area. However, the production of relatively large numbers of college and university graduates in an area may lead to increases in the employment of university-trained manpower if local industries expand production of goods that use college-educated workers intensively. Using data from the U.S., we find a modest link between the production and use of BA degree recipients; states awarding relatively large numbers of BA degrees in each coho...