Diffusion of Common Application Membership and Admissions Outcomes at American Colleges and Universities

We study the adoption of Common Application membership by private four-year postsecondary institutions and its role in explaining the growth in undergraduate applications. Using data from the College Board’s Annual Survey of Colleges, proportional hazards models suggest that institutions respond to the net benefit of adoption. We then estimate that membership increases applications by 5.7–7.0 percent and decreases yield rates by 2.8–3.9 percent. Acceptance rates decrease for members when their local networks are large. Falsification tests indicate that membership effects occur as a one-time adoption shock. Membership also decreases SAT scores and increases the percent students of color

Why Do Field Differentials In Average Faculty Salaries Vary Across Universities?

Average faculty salaries at American colleges and universities differ widely across fields at American colleges and universities and the magnitudes of these field differences in salaries have been growing over time. What is less well known, however, is that at any point in time there are wide differences in the magnitudes of field differences in faculty salaries across academic institutions. Our paper uses institutional level data by field on average faculty salaries, which we were granted access to by the universities that participate in a national data exchange, to analyze why these differences across institutions exist. Our main finding is that differences in the quality of faculty present in different fields at a university, as measured by differences in the National Research Council ratings of graduate programs at the university, are important predictors of the field differences in average faculty salaries that exist at the full professor level at the university.cheri_wp60.pdf: 3929 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020