School-to-Work Transitions
This set of research includes a 2010 project that examined implementation of the Post-9/11 GI Bill for returning military veterans, as well as a later examination of military veterans’ employment and earnings after receiving bachelor’s degrees from public, private, or for-profit colleges and universities. The more recent work focuses on young people’s transitions to postsecondary education and the labor market.
Newer work-in-progress focuses broadly on information disparities en route to college and career. One part of the project leverages high school students’ geographic distance to colleges and universities to estimate causal effects of different kinds of postsecondary institutions (e.g., high-success, competitive, STEM-intensive, and HBCU) on early-career educational attainment and earnings.
In 2022-2023 work exploring how European-style vocational pathways may influence social inequality, I examine how educational attainment mediates the relationship between young adults’ family background and labor market outcomes in Spain versus the United States.
My 2023 work on Artificial Intelligence (AI) examines how AI is likely to affect the future workforce, and what this means for how we teach AI in K-12 and postsecondary education.
Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Education and Equity
Steele, J. L. (2023). How will AI affect students’ employability? Implications for equity in education (Working Paper in Progress){: .btn–research} Working Paper in Progress
Slides in Progress
Steele, J. L. (2023). To GPT or not GPT: Empowering our students to learn with AI. Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence, 5. Full text article
International Variation in Paths to the Labor Market
Steele., J. L. (In press in 2023). Education and opportunity in Spain and the U.S.: Evidence from youth labor market entry. International Journal of Education Economics and Development. doi: 10.1504/IJEED.2024.10057537
This work was undertaken at the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study in Spain in spring 2022 with funding through the François Chevalier Fellowship program.
Using large random samples of young adults ages 24 to 30 in Spain and the United States, I examine socioeconomic mobility in each country and how vocational education options may enhance or detract from such mobility. In Spain, the socioeconomic status of young adults is less dependent on that of their parents than in the U.S., but educational attainment is strongly related to family background in both countries. What differ are educational returns. In Spain, educational attainment strongly predicts job satisfaction, but in the U.S., it predicts employment and earnings. Yet, if the distribution of average adult skills by education level in the U.S. matched that of Spain, inequality by education level in the U.S. would be roughly halved, all else remaining equal. Regarding the role of vocational education, young adults in Spain with non-tertiary vocational credentials show an employment advantage that does not translate to higher earnings.
Diapositivas en español Slides in English Preprint Working Paper Journal link to abstract
Information Disparities En Route to College and Career
Steele, J. L. (2023). Which college types increase earnings? Estimates from geographic proximity. Education Economics. doi: 10.1080/09645292.2023.2265594.
The question of why postsecondary institutions produce different labor market outcomes is difficult to answer due to unobserved student characteristics. Here, I leverage students’ geographic proximity to three classifications of postsecondary institutions—earnings-enhancing, competitive, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Using a nationally representative sample, I estimate attainment and earnings effects of first attending each type. Attending an institution classified as earnings-enhancing increases humanities credit completion, degree attainment, and early-career wages. Among underrepresented students, living closest to an HBCU strongly predicts HBCU enrollment. This yields higher STEM credit completion but lower early-career wages, suggesting possible labor market bias.
Postbaccalaureate Trajectories of Military Veterans in the Civilian Labor Market
Funders: RAND Independent Research and Development Fund
Years:2012-2013
Steele, J. L., Buryk, P., & McGovern, G. (2018). Student veterans’ outcomes by higher education sector: Evidence from three cohorts of Baccalaureate and Beyond . Research in Higher Education, 59, 866-896.
We use nationally representative survey data from three cohorts of bachelor’s degree recipients to examine military veterans’ student loan debt at graduation and their employment and earnings 1, 4, and 10 years after graduation, relative to observably similar graduates. We also examine whether the effects of veteran status depend on college sector. Using propensity score weights with covariate adjustment, we find employment and earnings premiums for veterans 1 and 4 years after graduation, and an employment penalty but earnings premium (conditional on employment) 10 years after graduation. We find no clear evidence of a for-profit employment or earnings penalty among bachelor’s degree recipients, including veterans. We do find that veterans are as likely as similar non-veterans to graduate with debt, and that graduating from a for-profit institution yields markedly higher debt amounts, especially for veterans, despite the availability of Montgomery GI Bill benefits for these cohorts.
Military Veterans’ Experiences in Higher Education and Using the Post-9/11 GI Bill
Funders: American Council on Education with the Lumina Foundation Years: 2010
Steele, J. L., Salcedo, N., & Coley, J. (2010). Service members in school: Military veterans’ experiences using the Post-9/11 GI Bill and pursuing postsecondary education. American Council on Education and the RAND Corporation.
The Post-9/11 GI Bill, which took effect in August of 2009, significantly increased the higher education benefits available to eligible individuals who served on active duty in the U.S. armed forces after September 10, 2001. The result is the most generous education benefit for veterans since the original GI Bill of 1944. However, the new array of benefits is also more complicated to administer than benefits offered under the existing Montgomery GI Bill, resulting in numerous first-year implementation challenges. To better understand these challenges from the perspective of students and higher education institutions, the American Council on Education (ACE) asked RAND to survey and conduct focus groups with veterans and eligible dependents and to interview higher education administrators. This report, which was made possible by ACE and the Lumina Foundation for Education, presents results of the study, describing not only students’ and institutions’ reported experiences with the new benefits, but also students’ experiences transferring military training to academic credit and adapting to life on campus.
Monograph Preprint
Bibtex RAND Research Brief
Congressional Testimony and Op-Eds
Steele, J. L. (2012). Military veterans’ experiences in for-profit higher education: Testimony submitted before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity on May 16, 2012 (CT-376). Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Steele, J. L. (2013, Nov. 8). Post-9/11 GI Bill: A good investment in our veterans can be better. The RAND Blog.
Steele, J. L. (2012, Feb. 6). Colleges can learn from for-profits’ emphasis on the consumer. Military Times, p. 16.