For-Profit Colleges and Bachelor's Degree Completion

David Harding, University of Michigan
Jane Rochmes, University of Michigan
Diego Torres, University of Michigan

The rise of for-profit colleges raises important questions about educational opportunity, particularly whether such institutions have the potential to increase access to higher education and to reduce racial/ethnic and class disparities in college enrollment and completion. This study examines whether attending a for-profit college is associated with increased probability of receiving a Bachelor’s degree. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort, which follows a representative sample of about 9,000 youth age 12-16 in 1997 through 2008. We compare individuals who have attended for-profit colleges with comparison groups of respondents who never enrolled in college and those who attended public colleges, controlling for pre-college characteristics through regression adjustment and for time-varying confounders using inverse probability of treatment weighting.