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Study: For-Profit College Degrees Don't Increase Earnings

The Washington Post's Wonkblog flags a new study:

A new study from two Boston University economists ... finds that students at for-profit schools fail to receive any wage boost from obtaining a certificate or associate’s degree.

The study on earnings outcomes, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, attempted to control for socioeconomic factors. As the BU authors wrote in the introduction:

Since students who enter for-profit institutions tend to be disadvantaged, their poorer labor market performance after completing their education may reflect our inability to control adequately for pre-entry differences. ... On the other hand, if the wage gain among for-profit graduates is lower, then the hypothesis that the for-profit education is less valuable becomes more plausible.

And that's what the authors concluded:

While high standard errors force us to be cautious, our results strongly suggest that, even after controlling for an extensive set of background variables, students at for-profit institutions do not benefit more and often benefit less from their education than apparently similar students at not-for-profit and public institutions.

This program aired on July 3, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.

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