College education and upward mobility

Opportunity Insights (https://opportunityinsights.org/) is a research initiative with the goal of understanding upward mobility in the United States by studying barriers to economic opportunity and translating findings into policy recommendations. These data consist of a subset on anonymized dataset gathered in 2017 on all college students in the United States from 1999 - 2013 (30 million students) study to examine the association of higher education system and upward mobility. The data includes parental income distributions and student earnings outcomes by college. The data in this package do not include tiers 12 (less than two year schools of any type), 13 (students attending college with insufficient data), and 14 (students not in college between the ages of 19-22). Monetary values are measured in 2015 dollars; i.e. adjusted for inflation to 2015 dollars.

Usage

opp_insights_colleges

Format

A dataframe with 2153 rows and 26 columns

super_opeid

Numeric, a college or university identifier constructed by the Opportunity Insights team based on tax records. It is similar but not identical to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education ID (OPEID) and different from the ID in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

name

Character vector, college name

region

Factor, with levels 1 (Northeast), 2 (Midwest), 3 (South), 4 (West)

state

Character vector, two letter state ID

tier_name

Character vector, selectivity and type of college with 8 values, Ivy Plus, Other elite schools (private and public), Highly selective public, Highly selective private, Selective public, Selective private, Nonselective 4-year public, Nonselective 4-year private, Two-year (public and private not-for-profit), Four-year for-profit, Two-year for-profit

type

Factor with 3 levels, public, private non-profit, for-profit

exp_instr_pc_2013

Numeric, instructional expenditures per student in 2013

ipeds_enrollment_2013

Numeric, total undergraduate enrollment in Fall 2013

sticker_price_2013

Numeric, average annual cost of attendance in 2013

scorecard_netprice_2013

Numeric, net annual cost of attendance for bottom income quintile in 2013

grad_rate_150_p_2013

Numeric, percentage of students graduating within 150% of normal time in 2013

avgfacsal_2013

Numeric, average faculty salary in 2013

sat_avg_2013

Numeric, average SAT scores (scaled to 1600) in 2013

endowment_pc_2000

endowment assets per student in 2000

mr_kq5_pq1

Numeric, mobility rate, top 20% of the income distribution

mr_ktop1_pq1

Numeric, mobility rate, top 1% of the income distribution

par_median

Numeric, median parent household income

par_q1

Numeric, fraction of parents in first (bottom) income quintile

par_q2

Numeric, fraction of parents in second income quintile

par_q3

Numeric, fraction of parents in third income quintile

par_q4

Numeric, fraction of parents in fourth income quintile

par_q5

Numeric, fraction of parents in fifth income quintile

par_top5pc

Numeric, fraction of parents in top 5% of income distribution

par_top1pc

Numeric, fraction of parents in top 1% of income distribution

k_median

Numeric, median child individual earnings in 2014 (at age 34)

k_top5pc

Numeric, fraction of children in top 5% of income distribution

k_top1pc

Numeric, fraction of children in top 1% of income distribution

Source

Tables mrc_table2.csv and mrc_table10.csv from https://opportunityinsights.org/data/

References

Chetty, Raj, et al. "Income segregation and intergenerational mobility across colleges in the United States." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135.3 (2020): 1567-1633.