Seminar 'Workhorses of Opportunity': Regional Universities Increase Local Social Mobility Econometrics/Applied Micro seminar Add to calendar 2024-12-02 11:00 2024-12-02 12:15 Europe/Rome 'Workhorses of Opportunity': Regional Universities Increase Local Social Mobility Seminar Room 3rd Floor Villa La Fonte YYYY-MM-DD Print Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email When 02 December 2024 11:00 - 12:15 CET Where Seminar Room 3rd Floor Villa La Fonte Organised by Department of Economics In this seminar, Russell Michael Weinstein (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), will present the paper "Workhorses of Opportunity': Regional Universities Increase Local Social Mobility'. Regional public universities educate approximately 70 percent of college students at four-year public universities and an even larger share of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. They aim to provide opportunity for education and social mobility, in part by locating near potential students. In this paper, we use the historical assignment of normal schools and insane asylums (normal schools grew into regional universities while asylums remain small) and data from Opportunity Insights to identify the effects of regional universities on the social mobility of nearby children. Children in counties given a normal school get more education and have better economic and social outcomes, especially lower-income children. For several key outcomes, we show this effect is a causal effect on children, and not only selection on which children live near universities. We use student-level survey data to compare characteristics of college-going students from normal school and asylum counties and to study the geographic barriers that keep asylum-county children from attending college.Co-author: Greg Howard (University of Illinois) Contact(s): Cecile Marie Brière (EUI - Department of Economics) Scientific Organiser(s): Prof. Andrea Ichino (EUI - Department of Economics) Speaker(s): Associate Professor Russell Michael WEINSTEIN (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)