| Jason Dunick
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Do 4-year colleges produce better citizens? Measuring the civic returns to different types of post-secondary education
FINAL REPORT:
In the debate about the government's responsibility to subsidize higher education, the focus on individual wage returns often overshadows the other positive social effects of post-secondary education. Positive externalities such as greater civic participation have long been associated with increased educational levels within society, but the precise impact of specific types of education on these social benefits is largely unknown. To address this issue, this study estimates the causal impact of exposure to a four-year school on the volunteering and voting habits of young adults. This study takes into account the possibility that selection into a four-year school could be correlated with unobservable characteristics that also predict future civic behavior. To correct the potential selection bias caused by an endogenous educational choice variable, this study utilizes the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88) in conjunction with the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS) and the Common Core of Data (CCD) to calculate a new instrumental variable to predict selection into a four-year school. The instrument uses the proportion of students enrolled at a public four-year institution within a 100-mile radius of the respondent's high school.
The results from a bivariate probit model show that attending a four-year school anytime during early adulthood appears to have a very strong impact on voting behaviors. In addition, if a student enrolls full-time in a four-year school immediately after high school they increase their probability of volunteering by nearly 8 percentage points. This effect is both immediate and persistent, as quick enrollment after high school has a positive impact on volunteering both two and eight years after high school.
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