TY - JOUR AU - Bound,John AU - Lovenheim,Michael AU - Turner,Sarah TI - Why Have College Completion Rates Declined? An Analysis of Changing Student Preparation and Collegiate Resources JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 15566 PY - 2009 Y2 - December 2009 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15566 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15566.pdf N1 - Author contact info: John Bound Department of Economics University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220 Tel: 734/998-7149 Fax: 734/998-7415 E-Mail: jbound@umich.edu Michael Lovenheim Department of Policy Analysis and Management Cornell University 135 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Tel: 607/255-0705 Fax: 607/255-4071 E-Mail: mfl55@cornell.edu Sarah Turner Department of Economics University of Virginia 249 Ruffner Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903-2495 Tel: 434/924-7857 Fax: 434/924-1384 E-Mail: sturner@virginia.edu AB - Partly as a consequence of the substantial increase in the college wage premium since 1980, a much higher fraction of high school graduates enter college today than they did a quarter century ago. However, the rise in the fraction of high school graduates attending college has not been met by a proportional increase in the fraction who finish. Comparing two cohorts from the high school classes of 1972 and 1992, we show eight-year college completion rates declined nationally, and this decline is most pronounced amongst men beginning college at less-selective public 4-year schools and amongst students starting at community colleges. We decompose the observed changes in completion rates into the component due to changes in the preparedness of entering students and the component due to collegiate characteristics, including type of institution and resources per student. We find that, while both factors play a role, it is the collegiate characteristics that are more important. A central contribution of this analysis is to show the importance of the supply-side of the higher education in explaining changes in college completion. ER -