Ralph Stinebrickner

Working During School and Academic Performance

Unique new data from a college with a mandatory work‐study program are used to examine the relationship between working during school and academic performance. Particular attention is paid to the importance of biases that are potentially present because the number of hours that are worked is endogenously chosen by the individual. The results suggest that, even if results appear reasonable, a researcher should be cautious when drawing policy conclusions about the relationship between hours worked and a particular outcome of interest unless he or she is confident that potential problems associated with the endogeneity of hours have been adequately addressed.

Understanding Educational Outcomes of Students from Low-Income Families: Evidence from a Liberal Arts College with a Full Tuition Subsidy Program

Issues related to schooling attainment of children from low-income families arise frequently in current education policy debates. There has been a specific interest in understanding why a very high percentage of children from low-income families do not graduate from college and why the college graduation rates of children from low-income families are substantially lower than those of children from other families. Using unique new data obtained directly from a high-quality liberal arts college that maintains a full tuition subsidy program (and large room and board subsidies) for all students, this paper provides direct evidence that reasons unrelated to the direct costs of college are very important in explaining these realities.

The Causal Effect of Studying on Academic Performance

Abstract While a substantial amount of recent attention has been paid to understanding the determinants of educational outcomes, little is known about the causal impact of the most fundamental input in the education production function - a students study effort. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of studying on grade performance by taking advantage of unique, new data that has been collected specifically for this purpose. Important for understanding the potential impact of a wide array of education policies, the results suggest that human capital accumulation is far from predetermined at the time of college entrance.

s-Consensus trees and indices

In the field of numerical taxonomy it is often desirable to determine a tree which is the consensus (common part) of severaln-trees, each of which represents a classification of the same set of objects. In this note, ans-consensus tree and corresponding consensus index for a collection ofn-trees are defined. The choice of a value for the parameters will determine the number of nodes in thes-consensus tree and its tendency to resemble the strict or Adams-consensus tree.

Interracial Friendships in College

We use unique longitudinal data to provide direct evidence about interracial friendships at different stages of college and to provide new evidence about some of the reasons for the observed patterns of interaction. We find that, while much sorting exists at all stages of college, black and white students are, in reality, very compatible as friends; randomly assigned roommates of different races are as likely to become friends as randomly assigned roommates of the same race. Further, we find that, in the long run, being (randomly) assigned a black roommate significantly increases the number of other black friends a white student has.

s-Consensus index method: An additional axiom

A consensus index method is an ordered pair consisting of a consensus method and a consensus index Day and McMorris (1985) have specified two minimal axioms, one which should be satisfied by the consensus method and the other by the consensus index The axiom for consensus indices is not satisfied by the s-consensus index In this paper, an additional axiom, which states that a consensus index equal to one implies profile unanimity, is proposed The s-consensus method together with a modification of the s-consensus index (i e, normalized by the number of distinct nontrivial clusters in the profile) is shown to satisfy the two axioms proposed by Day and McMorris and the new axiom

Compatibility in a graph-theoretic setting

Abstract In ordinal models for cluster analysis, it has proved useful to study the effect of the action of dissimilarity coefficients by certain isotone mappings. The current work places these results in a graph-theoretic setting, and shows how the resulting theory extends the earlier results obtained in the ordinal models.

Preservation of weak order equivalence

Abstract A study is made of the exact nature of a class of cluster methods that are suitable for use with data having only ordinal significance.

TIME-USE AND ACADEMIC PEER EFFECTS IN COLLEGE: TIME-USE AND ACADEMIC PEER EFFECTS IN COLLEGE

This paper examines academic peer effects in college. Unique new data from the Berea Panel Study allow us to focus on a mechanism wherein a students peers affect her achievement by changing her study effort. Although the potential relevance of this mechanism has been recognized, data limitations have made it difficult to provide direct evidence about its importance. We find that a students freshman grade point average is affected by the amount her peers studied in high school, suggesting the importance of this mechanism. Using time diary information, we confirm that college study time is actually being affected. (JEL I20, F21, J01)

Job Tasks, Time Allocation, and Wages

While a burgeoning literature has extolled the conceptual virtues of directly measuring the underlying job tasks that define work activities, in practice task-based approaches have been hampered by well-known data limitations. We study wage determination using data collected specifically to address these limitations. Most fundamentally, we construct the first longitudinal dataset containing job-level task information for individual workers. New quantitative task measures take advantage of unique survey questions that ask respondents to detail the amount of time spent performing People, Information, and Objects tasks at different skill levels. These measures have clear interpretations, suggest natural proxies for on-the-job human capital accumulation, and provide methodological guidance for future data collection initiatives. A model of comparative advantage highlights the benefits of the unique data features, and guides the specification and interpretation of empirical models. We provide new findings about the effect of current and past tasks on wages. First, current job tasks are quantitatively important, with high skilled tasks being paid substantially more than low skilled tasks. Second, there is no evidence of learning-by-doing (i.e., effects of past tasks) for low skilled tasks, but strong evidence for high skilled tasks. Current and past high skilled information tasks are particularly valuable, although high skilled interpersonal tasks also play a significant role. Shifting 10 percent of work time from low skilled people tasks to high skilled information tasks increases a worker’s yearly wage by 22 percent after ten years. The accumulation of valuable task-specific experience accounts for 70 percent of this increase, and the direct current-period effect of performing different tasks accounts for the remainder.