Abstracts:
"A Passage to America: University Funding and International Students" (with John Bound, Breno Braga, Gaurav Khanna and Sarah Turner):
Substantial state subsidies to public higher education in the United States have historically allowed in-state students at public colleges and universities to pay significantly lower tuition and fee levels than their out-of-state counterparts. With the marked decline in state appropriations for higher education in recent years, some university leaders are faced with the choice between increasing tuition levels, cutting expenditures – and thereby reducing resources per student, or enrolling a greater proportion of students paying full out-of-state tuition. With strong economic growth in countries like China and India, the pool of undergraduate students from abroad who are academically and financially prepared to attend U.S. colleges has increased markedly in the last decade. In this paper, we examine whether declines in state appropriations have led public universities to enroll more foreign students who are able to pay the full-fare tuition. Our empirical results, in combination with a model of university behavior, tell a compelling story about the link between changes in state funding and foreign enrollment in recent years.


"Preschool and Special Needs Placement: Learning more from the Head Start Impact Study":
Evidence suggests that one of the potential long-term benefits of early childhood education is a reduction in rates of special education placement in K-12. Using data from the Head Start Impact Study, the first randomized control trial of Head Start, I will present preliminary estimates of the impact of attending Head Start on special education placement in third grade.