Data and Code for: Why Have College Completion Rates Increased? An Analysis of Rising Grades

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Jeffrey Denning, Brigham Young University; Eric Eide, Brigham Young University; Kevin Mumford, Purdue University; Richard Patterson, United States Military Academy; Merrill Warnick, Stanford University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
GradRatesFinal			06/01/2021 04:52:PM
LargePublicCode			06/01/2021 04:53:PM
PublicLiberalArts			04/14/2021 12:12:PM

Project Citation:

Denning, Jeffrey, Eide, Eric, Mumford, Kevin, Patterson, Richard, and Warnick, Merrill. Data and Code for: Why Have College Completion Rates Increased? An Analysis of Rising Grades . Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2022. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-06-15. https://doi.org/10.3886/E136346V1

Project Description

Summary: College completion rates declined from the 1970s to the 1990s. We document that this trend has reversed--since the 1990s, college completion rates have increased. We investigate the reasons for the increase in college graduation rates. Collectively, student characteristics, institutional resources, and institution attended do not explain much of the change. However, we show that grade inflation can explain much of the change in graduation rates. We show that GPA is a strong predictor of graduation rates and that GPAs have been rising since the 1990s. We also find that in national survey data and rich administrative data from 9 large public universities increases in college GPAs cannot be explained by student demographics, preparation, and school factors. Further, we find that at a public liberal arts college, grades have increased over time conditional on final exam performance.

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:
      I20 Education and Research Institutions: General
      I21 Analysis of Education
      I23 Higher Education; Research Institutions

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Published Versions

V1 [2022-06-15]

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