Essays in the Economics of Higher Education

This dissertation is comprised of two chapters regarding the economics of post-secondary education. The first concerns effects of peer gender: Large gender differences exist in the take-up and completion of college majors across academic fields. The degree of gender concentration within fields tends to increase over time spent in college. In this chapter, I investigate how the gender composition of peers in first-semester classes impacts women's and men's academic outcomes and major choices. I find that a larger proportion of male peers hurts female academic achievement and decreases female persistence in majors, relative to men in the same classes. The second chapter regards collusion in the determination of financial aid: Collusion is an important economic phenomenon that may play a role in many industries. This paper focuses on a case of alleged collusion in the determination of financial aid offers among a set of elite US universities known as the "Overlap Group." A Justice Department suit alleged that collusion led to an increase in the average effective price of attendance for students at these universities. A simple model of price competition between schools suggests that this would be the case. Applying conventional difference-in-difference and synthetic controls methods to the case of the Overlap Group suggests that the cessation of collusion did lead to a reallocation of university budgets towards financial aid. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]