Estimating the Social Value of Higher Education: Willingness to Pay for Community and Technical Colleges

Much is known about private returns to education in the form of higher earnings. Less is known about social value, over and above the private, market value. Associations between education and socially-desirable outcomes are strong, but disentangling the effect of education from other causal factors is challenging. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the social value of one form of higher education. We elicit willingness to pay for the Kentucky Community and Technical College System directly through a stated-preferences survey and compare our estimate of total social value to our estimates of private value in the form of increased earnings. Our earnings estimates are based on two distinct data sets, one administrative and one from the U.S. Census. The difference between the total social value and the increase in earnings is our measure of the education externality. Our work differs from previous research by eliciting values directly in a way that yields a total value including any external benefits and by focusing on education at the community college level. Our preferred estimate indicates the social value of expanding the system substantially exceeds private value by approximately 50 percent.social returns, education externalities, contingent valuation, earnings

The Individual, Regional and State Economic Impacts of Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges

Excerpt from the executive summary: This report presents the results of our nine-month effort to measure the economic value of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), both directly to its students around the state, and indirectly to all residents of Kentucky. We find wide public support for KCTCS, and a willingness to pay for an expansion of its programs. We also find a large variation in the individual returns to community and technical college education, in terms of expected work-life earnings by gender and by region of the state

The Impact of Maternity Minimum Stay Mandates on Hospitalizations: An Extension

Maternity stay mandates, Length of stay, Hospital charges, I18, K32,