Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job Losses

Abstract

Deciding which field to study is one of the most consequential decisions college students make, but most research on the topic focuses on students attending four-year colleges. To understand how students attending community colleges make field of study decisions, I link administrative educational records of recent high school graduates with local mass layoff and plant closing announcements. I find that declines in local employment deter students from entering closely related community college programs and instead induce them to enroll in other vocationally-oriented programs. I further document that students predominantly shift enrollment between programs that lead to occupations requiring similar skills.

The Effect of Job Displacement on College Enrollment: Evidence from Ohio

“…We also examine fields of study pursued by displaced workers from different industries. Although we lack occupational data, previous research has documented that students exiting from specific occupations such as health and law enforcement enroll in community college programs that require similar skills (Acton, 2020). In our Ohio sample, many former manufacturing employees study engineering upon college enrollment (22% compared to 16% of overall displaced workers who enroll after layoff).…”

“…Lastly, we study enrollment effects by firm shutdown status -proxied by a firm's unique identifier disappearing in the employer records or if employment level drops to zero -because many individuals' jobless spells end with "recall hires," reemployment at the firm from which they separated (Fujita and Moscarini, 2017;Albertini and Fairise, 2018). If newly-displaced workers expect to be recalled by their employers, they may be less likely to seek retraining to change occupations while jobless.…”

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on University Student Enrollment Decisions and Higher Education Resource Allocation

“…On average, over their lifetime, college graduates earn more than twice as much as typical high school graduates (Hershbein & Kearney, 2014). In addition, education leads to life choices that promote better health, less reliance on social safety net programs, and fewer encounters with the criminal justice system (Oreopoulos & Salvanes, 2011;Acton, 2020). However, lockdowns and safety restrictions caused by the pandemic have affected student decisions about attending college.…”

Advance Layoff Notices and Aggregate Job Loss

“…First, our data could be merged with other microdata to update the literature about WARN notice incidence and the outcomes for notified workers. 4 Second, the geographic granularity of our data allows us to measure concentrated local demand shocks and could be used in work related to that of Autor, Dorn, and Hanson (2013), Foote, Grosz, and Stevens (2019), Notowidigdo (2019), and Acton (2020). Third, our data could be used to study the effects of state amendments to the federal WARN Act on notice provision and timing.…”