Publications by Judith Scott-Clayton

This Annenberg Institute working paper provides up-to-date causal evidence on labor market returns to master’s degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics, and initial labor market conditions.

Using employer-employee-student matched administrative data from Ohio, this paper provides the first direct evidence of workers' enrollment responses following mass layoffs in the United States.

Using data on students enrolled in two- and four-year colleges of the City University of New York, this essay assesses the distribution of benefits of the scholarship program in terms of who qualifies for, receives, and renews awards.

This paper examines returns to terminal associate degrees and certificates up to 11 years after students initially entered a community college in Ohio. The authors use an individual fixed-effects approach that controls for students’ pre-enrollment earnings and allows the returns to credential completion to vary over time.

This paper illustrates student responses to Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements as well as the tradeoffs faced by a social planner weighing whether to set performance standards in the context of need-based aid.

This Brookings Institution report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education to examine whether disparities in student loan default rates by race/ethnicity and institution sector can be explained by other factors, along with what happens after a default and whether this also varies across student subgroups.

In this Brookings report, the author analyzes new data on student debt and repayment released by the U.S. Department of Education in October 2017. The author then provides five key findings based on this analysis.

In this Brookings report, the author examines the policy landscape and reviews available evidence to assess the potential benefits and costs of thinking beyond the box in college admissions. The author then offers six key findings that have emerged from this review.

With the goal of informing federal higher education policy decisions, this brief for the Urban Institute suggests federal student aid reform that simplifies the eligibility and application process.

This Brookings report discusses what role the Federal Work-Study program might have in a modern “college completion and career readiness” agenda.

This report examines the consequences of ending free college in England, and considers what lessons may be drawn for the U.S. policy conversation.

This paper provides an overview of undergraduate financial aid to inform discussions of the future of undergraduate education in the United States and the role of financial aid within it.

Based on recent CAPSEE studies in two states, this brief discusses the motivations for satisfactory academic progress requirements for federal aid, examines how community college students are affected, and assesses the implications for program efficiency and equity.

This brief discusses current research, including CAPSEE analysis, regarding both the effectiveness of the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program and its equity in terms of the distribution of funds.

Using an administrative data set from one state, this paper examines the effects of receiving a modest Pell Grant on financial aid packages, labor supply while in school, and academic outcomes for community college students.

This CAPSEE working paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to provide new, nationally representative, non-experimental estimates of the returns to degrees, as well as to assess the possible limitations of single-state, administrative-data-based estimates.

This NBER working paper uses state administrative data and unemployment records to construct a variety of possible institution-level labor market outcome metrics to explore how sensitive institutional ratings are to the choice of labor market metric, length of follow-up, and inclusion of adjustments for student characteristics.

In this report for Brookings, Judith Scott-Clayton lays out a new analysis that shows that the gap in student debt between Black and White bachelor's degree earners triples in the four years after graduation.

This paper utilizes two complementary quasi-experimental strategies to identify causal effects of the WV PROMISE scholarship, a broad-based state merit aid program, up to 10 years post–college entry and examine important outcomes that have not previously been examined, including homeownership, neighborhood characteristics, and financial management.

Using national data on baccalaureate recipients in 1993 and 2008, this CAPSEE working paper examines labor market and debt outcomes four years after students graduate, with a focus on exploring heterogeneity by institution type and major, as well as trends over time.

This NBER working paper outlines tax-based student aid programs and assesses their impact on student behavior.

In this National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, the authors describe the barriers that students face during the transition to college and review the evidence on potential policy solutions.

Using two waves of the Beginning Postsecondary Student survey, this paper provides the first national estimates of the effect of the Federal Work-Study program on students' academic and labor market outcomes.

This practitioner packet summarizes CCRC’s research on remedial placement at community colleges and considers how including students’ high school transcript information in the assignment process could improve placement accuracy.

This publication presents findings on the costs of remedial placement testing at three colleges, and it provides guidance on how other colleges could undertake similar analyses.

This CAPSEE working paper examines the prevalence and consequences of Pell Grant recipients’ failure to meet the standards for satisfactory academic progress required for grant renewal.

This paper uses administrative data and a rich predictive model to examine the accuracy of remedial screening tests, used either with or instead of high school transcript data to determine remedial assignment.

Using detailed data from three community colleges, the authors of this study employ the ingredients method to estimate the costs to colleges and students of remedial placement systems at community college.

In this discussion paper, the authors argue that the time has come to comprehensively redesign the Pell program, and they propose three major structural reforms to the Pell Grant program.

This article reviews the evidence on various student aid programs and their effects on college enrollment, persistence, and completion and discusses the implications of these findings for aid policy.

In response to a journal article questioning CCRC’s claims about the effectiveness of developmental education, this essay discusses methodological concerns and other issues that may be a source of confusion.

This paper finds that remediation does little to develop students' skills but does not discourage initial enrollment or persistence, except among students identified as potentially misassigned.

This paper analyzes the predictive validity of one of the most commonly used placement exams using data on over 42,000 first-time entrants in a large, urban community college system.

This National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper examines working patterns among traditional-age college students from 1970–2009, considers several explanations for the long-term trend of rising employment, and examines whether the upward trend is likely to resume when economic conditions improve.

This paper examines the role of entry assessment and its implementation, the validity of common assessments, and emerging directions in assessment policy and practice.

This journal article uses administrative data from West Virginia to provide the first quasi-experimental estimates of the effect of the Federal Work Study (FWS) program.

This paper uses a quasi-experimental approach to identify causal effects of West Virginia's PROMISE scholarship program, which offers free tuition to students who maintain a minimum GPA and course load.

This paper uses administrative data from Washington State to compare the outcomes of young career-technical students across both technical colleges and comprehensive community colleges

Evidence from behavioral economics and psychology lends support for the idea that students are more likely to persist and succeed in programs with highly structured paths to completion.