Increasing college attainment in the United States: Variations in returns to states and their residents

Article, Refereed Journal
Crellin, M., Kelly, P., Prince, H. (2012). Increasing College Attainment in the United States: Variations in Returns to States and their Residents. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 44(4): 35-41.

General acceptance of the strong relationships between education, income, and public economic strength is at the core of all of college attainment goals at the national and state levels. The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) have collaborated to develop online tools for each state (and the nation) to estimate how many additional college graduates would be needed in order to meet certain levels of college attainment, what levels of postsecondary performance it would take to produce them, the investment needed from the state to do so, and the returns to individuals and the state as a result. Using publicly available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, and a few other sources, the authors then set out to estimate the financial returns the U.S. and each of the 50 states would experience as a result of increasing the numbers of college graduates they produce. The authors have focused on financial gains such as increases in personal income and state and federal tax revenues, as well as reductions in health and corrections expenditures. This article summarizes some of the key findings of this work and describes the interactive models made publicly available by NCHEMS and CLASP.

Research Topic
Economic and Social Development