Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Susan Dynarski

Susan Dynarski, Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education

A Pathway to Mobility: Shifting Low-Income Students To Higher-Quality Degrees

Elizabeth Burland, Nora Delaney, Susan Dynarski, Katherine Leu, CJ Libassi, Katherine Michelmore, Stephanie Owen, Mary Quiroga, and Elizabeth Salinas

Abstract: Earnings inequality has increasingly grown within education groups, especially among college graduates (Autor, Goldin, and Katz 2020). Evidence suggests that returns to a bachelor’s (BA) degree vary sharply across institutions, yet low-income students disproportionately earn degrees at open-access and less selective colleges. Using a randomized trial, we evaluate an intervention intended to increase enrollment and degree attainment at a highly selective university among high-achieving, low-income students. Students offered a guarantee of four years of free tuition at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor shifted enrollment away from less selective colleges. The offer increased the probability of earning a BA from a highly selective institution by 11.6 percentage points (78 percent relative to the control mean) and increased four-year BA completion by 4 percentage points (11 percent), with no effect on six-year BA attainment. We find no reduction in STEM degrees or other indicators of academic mismatch. Linking experimentally induced enrollment shifts to institution-level earnings profiles implies a projected 40 percent increase in earnings among students induced to enroll at the flagship. 

Susan Dynarski is a professor of education, where she holds an appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She recently moved from the University of Michigan, where she held appointments in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, School of Education, Department of Economics and Institute for Social Research. At Michigan, she was co-director of the Education Policy Initiative and the Michigan Education Data Center and a University Professor of Diversity and Social Transformation. She is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dynarski earned an A.B. in social studies from Harvard, a Master of Public Policy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. Dynarski was selected as a Carnegie fellow in 2020. The Association for Public Policy and Management awarded her the Spencer Foundation Award for excellence in research in 2017. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators awarded her the Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award for excellence in research on student aid. The Chronicle of Higher Education named her a "Top Ten Influencer" in 2015. She writes frequently for the New York Times. Dynarski has been a visiting fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Princeton University. She has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Journal/Economic Policy, The Journal of Labor Economics and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She has served on the board of the Association for Public Policy and Management. She is past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy and Midwest Economics Association. Dynarski’s research focuses on understanding and reducing inequality in education. She uses large-scale datasets and quantitative methods of causal inference to understand the effects of charter schools, financial aid, postsecondary schooling, class size, and high school reforms on academic achievement and educational attainment. She has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, and the President's Commission on Tax Reform. She has consulted broadly with government agencies, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Department of Education, the Council of Economic Advisers, the US Government Accountability Office, school districts and state offices.