NBER Publications by Liang Zhang

Our paper uses institutional-level panel data to testwhether an increase in the number of institutionally funded National Merit Scholarship (NMS) winners at an institution isassociated with a reduction in the number of Pell Grant recipients at the institution. We find that, other factors held constant, an increase in the share of institutionally funded NMS winners in an institution's first-year class is associated with a reduction in the share of Pell Grant recipients among the institution's undergraduate student body and that the magnitude of this relationship is larges at the institutions that enroll the greatest number of NMS students.

During the last two decades, there has been a significant growth in the share of faculty members at American colleges and universities that are employed in part-time or in full-time non tenure-track positions. Our study is the first to address whether the increased usage of such faculty adversely affects undergraduate students' graduation rates. Using institutional level panel data from the College Board and other sources, our econometric analyses suggest that the increased usage of these faculty types does adversely affect graduation rates of students at 4-year colleges, with the largest impact on students being felt at the public masters-level institutions.