Higher Education.

• Position: Bureau News

The NBER's Working Group on Higher Education met in Cambridge on April 28. Group Director Charles T. Clotfelter of Duke University organized this program:

Jill M. Constantine and Nell S. Seftor, Mathematica Policy Research, "A Study of the Effect of Talent Search on Secondary and Postsecondary Outcomes in Florida, Indiana, and Texas"

Discussant: Scott Carrell, Dartmouth College

Florian Hoffman, University of Toronto, and Philip Oreopoulos, University of Toronto and NBER, "Do Better Professors Produce Better Students? The Effects of Objective and Subjective Measures of Teacher Quality on Academic Achievement"

Discussant: William Becker, Indiana University

James D. Adams, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and NBER, and J. Roger Clemmons, University of Florida, "The Growing Allocative Inefficiency of the U.S. Higher Education Sector"

Discussant: Richard Jensen, University of Notre Dame

David Figlio, University of Florida and NBER; Colleen Donovan, University of California, Berkeley; and Mark Rush, University of Florida, "Cramming: The Effects of School Accountability on College Study Habits and Performance"

Discussant: Christopher Avery, Harvard University and NBER

John Bound, University of Michigan and NBER; Michael Lovenheim, University of Michigan; and Sarah Turner, University of Virginia and NBER, "Understanding the Increased Time to the Baccalaureate Degree"

Discussant: Thomas Kane, Harvard University and NBER

Peter Arcidiacono, Duke University; Shakeeb Khan, University of Rochester; and Jacob L. Vigdor, Duke University and NBER, "Race-Conscious Admissions and Inter-Racial Contact: Does Homophily Matter?"

Discussant: Jesse Rothstein, Princeton University and NBER

Low-income students and students whose parents have not attended college typically are less likely than middle- and upper-income students to complete high school and attend college, and are thus less likely to reap the benefits of attending college. By providing information on the types of high school courses students should take to prepare for college and on the financial aid available to pay for college, the Talent Search program seeks to address substantial informational hurdles. Using a large amount of administrative data compiled in Florida, Indiana, and Texas for one complete cohort of students, Constantine and Seftor were able to use complex propensity score matching models to identify nonparticipating students who were most similar to Talent Search participants. They find...