Grading Policies and College Major Choice with Ability Learning (JMP)
Presented at: 2024 Midwest Economic Association, 2024 SOLE, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 2025 AEFP, 2025 ESWC

Universities worldwide have experienced substantial and persistent grade inflation. At some U.S. institutions, nearly half of students receive A’s, with the trend especially severe in non-STEM fields. How does this uneven inflation affect students’ educational choices and outcomes, and how does it shape the sorting of students into majors based on comparative advantage? This paper develops a dynamic individual decision model of college course and major choices, focusing on two mechanisms linked to grade inflation: students’ concern with maintaining a high GPA and their learning about unobserved, major-specific ability through course grades. The model is matched to administrative data from a large flagship state university and leverages policy variation during the COVID-19 pandemic, when universities expanded pass/fail grading, to isolate the concern for GPA from the ability learning channel. Results show that inflating STEM grades to the level of non-STEM fields raises STEM degree completion by about 11% but weakens sorting by comparative advantage particularly among lower-ability students. It modestly reduces the STEM gender gap (about 5%). A counterfactual grade-concealing policy increases STEM graduation without raising dropout or substantially distorting sorting. Overall, grade inflation is not unambiguously harmful or beneficial: it improves persistence in college and completion in STEM but reduces the informativeness of grades and weakens sorting by comparative advantage.

The Effect of Bilingual Education: Long-run Student Outcomes and Spillover Effects (with Kevin Hunt)
Presented at: 2024 Midwest Economic Association (SOLE Session)

A large and growing share of students arrive at school as English language learners (ELL). In Texas, schools provide bilingual education or an English as a second language programs for these students. Using a regression discontinuity design based on a quasi-experimental policy variation in Texas, this paper examines the effect of exposure to bilingual education in 1st grade on students' test scores and college enrollment. We find no effect of bilingual education in first grade on elementary school standardized test scores but large significant effects on college enrollment for both ELL and non-ELL students: bilingual education increases four-year university enrollment for ELL and non-ELL students by 6.4 and 6.8 p.p., respectively. The positive effects for both student groups in the long-run suggests that bilingual education has positive effects that are not well measured by short-run test scores for ELL students, and these effects spill-over to the outcomes on non-ELL students.

Equity-Efficiency Implications of Output-Based College Resource Allocation (with Chao Fu and Jesse Gregory)

GPA Requirements and College Major Transfers (with Maryam Yavas)