Availability of Higher Education and Educational Outcomes: Quantifying the Impacts of College Openings and Cohort Size

Research has established the benefits of higher education and the importance of affordability, however less is known about how the availability of higher education affects educational attainment. By constructing a comprehensive dataset on college openings in the U.S. from 1969 to 1991, I show that exogenous variation in two-year and four-year college availability, caused by changed birth cohort sizes and local college openings, substantially affects educational attainment. New four-year colleges increase the likelihood of obtaining a Bachelor\u27s degree, while new two-year colleges only affect Associate\u27s degree attainment. Additionally, results show that students from larger cohorts are crowded out of four-year colleges. This crowd-out results in lower lifetime educational attainment by pushing students to two-year colleges