Why Have College Completion Rates Declined? An Analysis of Changing Student Preparation and Collegiate Resources

We would like to thank Paul Courant, Arline Geronimus, Harry Holzer, Caroline Hoxby, Tom Kane, and Jeff Smith for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and we are grateful to Charlie Brown, John DiNardo, Justin McCrary and Kevin Stange for helpful discussions. We also thank Jesse Gregory and Andrew Winerman for providing helpful research support. We have benefited from comments of seminar participants at NBER, the Society of Labor Economics, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Brookings Institution, Stanford University and the University of Michigan. We would like to acknowledge funding during various stages of this project from the National Science Foundation [SES 1320-0351575], National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [T32 HD007339], the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. Much of this work was completed while Bound was a fellow at the Center For Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and Lovenheim was a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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