TY  - JOUR
AU  - Long,Bridget Terry
AU  - Kurlaender,Michal
TI  - Do Community Colleges provide a Viable Pathway to a Baccalaureate Degree?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14367
PY  - 2008
Y2  - September 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14367
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14367.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Bridget T. Long
Harvard University
Graduate School of Education
Gutman Library 465
6 Appian Way
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-4355
Fax: 617/496-3095
E-Mail: longbr@gse.harvard.edu

Michal Kurlaender
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
2051 Academic Surge
Davis, CA 95616
E-Mail: mkurlaender@ucdavis.edu
AB  - Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete a baccalaureate degree.  However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at a two-year institution. This paper examines how the outcomes of community college entrants compare to similar students who initially entered four-year institutions within the Ohio public higher education system.  Using a detailed dataset, we track outcomes for nine years and employ multiple strategies to deal with selection issues: propensity score matching and instrumental variables.  The results suggest that straightforward estimates are significantly biased, but even after accounting for selection, students who initially begin at a community college were 14.5 percent less likely to complete a bachelor's degree within nine years.
ER  -