IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/reihed/v59y2018i7d10.1007_s11162-017-9491-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Student Veterans’ Outcomes by Higher Education Sector: Evidence from Three Cohorts of the Baccalaureate and Beyond

Author

Listed:
  • Jennifer L. Steele

    (American University)

  • Peter Buryk

    (City of Norfolk)

  • Geoffrey McGovern

    (RAND Corporation)

Abstract

We use nationally representative survey data from three cohorts of bachelor’s degree recipients to examine military veterans’ student loan debt at graduation and their employment and earnings 1, 4, and 10 years after graduation, relative to observably similar graduates. We also examine whether the effects of veteran status depend on college sector. Using propensity score weights with covariate adjustment, we find employment and earnings premiums for veterans 1 and 4 years after graduation, and an employment penalty but earnings premium (conditional on employment) 10 years after graduation. We find no clear evidence of a for-profit employment or earnings penalty among bachelor’s degree recipients, including veterans. We do find that veterans are as likely as similar non-veterans to graduate with debt, and that graduating from a for-profit institution yields markedly higher debt amounts, especially for veterans, despite the availability of Montgomery GI Bill benefits for these cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Jennifer L. Steele & Peter Buryk & Geoffrey McGovern, 2018. "Student Veterans’ Outcomes by Higher Education Sector: Evidence from Three Cohorts of the Baccalaureate and Beyond," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(7), pages 866-896, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:reihed:v:59:y:2018:i:7:d:10.1007_s11162-017-9491-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11162-017-9491-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-017-9491-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11162-017-9491-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rajeev Darolia & Cory Koedel & Paco Martorell & Katie Wilson & Francisco Perez‐Arce, 2015. "Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For‐Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 881-903, September.
    2. David J. Deming & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2012. "The For-Profit Postsecondary School Sector: Nimble Critters or Agile Predators?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 139-164, Winter.
    3. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 313-336, June.
    4. Stephanie Riegg Cellini & Nicholas Turner, 2019. "Gainfully Employed?: Assessing the Employment and Earnings of For-Profit College Students Using Administrative Data," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 54(2), pages 342-370.
    5. Arcidiacono, Peter, 2004. "Ability sorting and the returns to college major," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 343-375.
    6. Saul Schwartz, 1986. "The Relative Earnings of Vietnam and Korean-Era Veterans," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 39(4), pages 564-572, July.
    7. Stephen L. Mangum & David E. Ball, 1989. "The Transferability of Military-Provided Occupational Training in the Post-Draft Era," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 42(2), pages 230-245, January.
    8. Sherwin Rosen & Paul Taubman, 1982. "Changes in Life-Cycle Earnings: What Do Social Security Data Show?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(3), pages 321-338.
    9. John Bound & Sarah Turner, 2002. "Going to War and Going to College: Did World War II and the G.I. Bill Increase Educational Attainment for Returning Veterans?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 784-815, October.
    10. Kane, Thomas J & Rouse, Cecilia Elena, 1995. "Labor-Market Returns to Two- and Four-Year College," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 600-614, June.
    11. Lang, Kevin & Weinstein, Russell, 2013. "The wage effects of not-for-profit and for-profit certifications: Better data, somewhat different results," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 230-243.
    12. David J. Deming & Noam Yuchtman & Amira Abulafi & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2016. "The Value of Postsecondary Credentials in the Labor Market: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(3), pages 778-806, March.
    13. Cellini, Stephanie Riegg & Chaudhary, Latika, 2014. "The labor market returns to a for-profit college education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 125-140.
    14. Joshua D. Angrist, 1998. "Estimating the Labor Market Impact of Voluntary Military Service Using Social Security Data on Military Applicants," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(2), pages 249-288, March.
    15. Bryant, Richard R. & Samaranayake, V. A. & Wilhite, Allen, 1993. "The effect of military service on the subsequent civilian wage of the post-Vietnam veteran," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 15-31.
    16. Angrist, Joshua & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More Than Nonveterans?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 74-97, January.
    17. Philip Oreopoulos & Uros Petronijevic, 2013. "Making College Worth It: A Review of Research on the Returns to Higher Education," NBER Working Papers 19053, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. P. Routon, 2014. "The Effect of 21st Century Military Service on Civilian Labor and Educational Outcomes," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 15-38, March.
    19. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records: Errata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1284-1286, December.
    20. Barry T. Hirsch & Stephen L. Mehay, 2003. "Evaluating the Labor Market Performance of Veterans Using a Matched Comparison Group Design," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    21. Joshua D. Angrist & Stacey H. Chen, 2011. "Schooling and the Vietnam-Era GI Bill: Evidence from the Draft Lottery," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 96-118, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew Baird & Michael S. Kofoed & Trey Miller & Jennie Wenger, 2022. "Veteran Educators or For‐Profiteers? Tuition Responses to Changes in the Post‐9/11 GI Bill," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(4), pages 1012-1039, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ayan, Davut, 2016. "Unemployment Among the Recent U.S. Veterans," MPRA Paper 117307, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Christos A. Makridis & Barry T. Hirsch, 2021. "The Labor Market Earnings of Veterans: Is Military Experience More or Less Valuable than Civilian Experience?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 303-333, December.
    3. Hou, Benyufang & Liu, Hong & Wang, Sophie Xuefei, 2020. "Returns to military service in off-farm wage employment: Evidence from rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    4. Lauren L. Schmitz & Dalton Conley, 2016. "The Effect of Vietnam-Era Conscription and Genetic Potential for Educational Attainment on Schooling Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 22393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Amy Kate Bailey & Bryan L. Sykes, 2018. "Veteran Status, Income, and Intergenerational Mobility Across Three Cohorts of American Men," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(4), pages 539-568, August.
    6. Stephanie Riegg Cellini & Rajeev Darolia, 2017. "High Costs, Low Resources, and Missing Information: Explaining Student Borrowing in the For-Profit Sector," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 671(1), pages 92-112, May.
    7. Rajeev Darolia, 2015. "Messengers of Bad News or Bad Apples? Student Debt and College Accountability," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 10(2), pages 277-299, March.
    8. Asali, Muhammad, 2015. "Compulsory Military Service and Future Earnings: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 8892, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Stephanie R. Cellini & Rajeev Darolia & Lesley J. Turner, 2020. "Where Do Students Go When For-Profit Colleges Lose Federal Aid?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 46-83, May.
    10. Christopher Jepsen & Peter Mueser & Kenneth Troske & Kyung-Seong Jeon, 2021. "The Benefits of Alternatives to Conventional College: Comparing the Labor-Market Returns to For-Profit Schools and Community Colleges," CESifo Working Paper Series 9272, CESifo.
    11. Armona, Luis & Chakrabarti, Rajashri & Lovenheim, Michael F., 2022. "Student debt and default: The role of for-profit colleges," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 67-92.
    12. Christopher Jepsen & Peter Mueser & Kenneth Troske & Kyung-Seong Jeon, 2023. "Estimates of Earnings Returns by Field of Study for For-Profit Schools and Community Colleges," CESifo Working Paper Series 10754, CESifo.
    13. Peter Siminski & Simon Ville & Alexander Paull, 2013. "Does the Military Train Men to be Violent Criminals? New Evidence from Australia’s Conscription Lotteries," Economics Working Papers wp13-01, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    14. Sarena Goodman & Alice Henriques Volz, 2020. "Attendance Spillovers between Public and For-Profit Colleges: Evidence from Statewide Variation in Appropriations for Higher Education," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 428-456, Summer.
    15. Barry T. Hirsch & Stephen L. Mehay, 2003. "Evaluating the Labor Market Performance of Veterans Using a Matched Comparison Group Design," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    16. Oliver Vanden Eynde, 2016. "Military Service and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Colonial Punjab," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(4), pages 10031035-10.
    17. Andrew Barr, 2015. "From the Battlefield to the Schoolyard: The Short- Term Impact of the Post- 9/11 GI Bill," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(3), pages 580-613.
    18. Jepsen, Christopher & Mueser, Peter R. & Jeon, Kyung-Seong, 2016. "The Benefits of Alternatives to Conventional College: Labor-Market Returns to Proprietary Schooling," IZA Discussion Papers 10007, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. P. Routon, 2014. "The Effect of 21st Century Military Service on Civilian Labor and Educational Outcomes," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 15-38, March.
    20. Young-Min Ju & Myoung-Jae Lee, 2017. "Control Function Approach for Partly Ordered Endogenous Treatments: Military Rank Premium in Wage," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(6), pages 1176-1194, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:reihed:v:59:y:2018:i:7:d:10.1007_s11162-017-9491-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.