Do Employers Prefer Workers Who Attend For-Profit Colleges? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Rajeev Darolia, Cory Koedel, Paco Martorell, Katie Wilson, Francisco Perez-Arce

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

60 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper reports results from a resume-based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives, such as public community colleges, being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes of young job applicants who recently completed their schooling to online job postings in six occupational categories and tracked employer callback rates. We find no evidence that employers prefer applicants with resumes listing a for-profit college relative to those whose resumes list either a community college or no college at all.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)881-903
Number of pages23
JournalJournal of Policy Analysis and Management
Volume34
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Business, Management and Accounting
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Public Administration

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