Essays on race, persistence, performance, and reclassification
Date
2022
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Increasing access and inclusion for underrepresented minorities in economics has been a focus for many in the discipline. Despite this, researchers have largely left two avenues of investigation that may provide insight into this issue unexplored: the role of community colleges and the role of reclassification of economics programs. I address the first potential avenue by using logistic models to determine whether race or race-related factors such as immigrant status or citizenship are related to performance or persistence in economics course-taking at a large community college in the southeastern United States. I find that race does not play a significant role in performance or persistence at this institution, but both citizenship and immigrant status do as immigrants and noncitizens outperform their nonimmigrants and citizen peers in certain circumstances. I investigate the second potential avenue related to the reclassification of economics programs to Econometrics and Quantitative Economics (EQE) using logistic and panel data models on data from IPEDS. I find that the proportion of international students is a key factor associated with whether an institution reclassified to EQE, and that reclassification has no association with racial diversity or economic education inclusion.
Description
Keywords
Economics, International students, Performance, Persistence, Reclassification, STEM