Dr. Darolia, along with co-author Cory Koedel, use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the role of high schools in explaining students’ initial college and major placements in the statewide system of 4-year public universities. They first empirically derive a measure of rigor for each university-by-major cell in the university system. These rigor measures for each system cell, combined with student-level measures of pre-entry academic preparation, allow us to measure the academic fit between students and their initial placements at the university-by-major level. Darolia and Koedel show that conditional on students’ own academic preparation, the high school of attendance has strong explanatory power over the rigor of the initial university-by-major placement. They also examine the extent to which the characteristics of high schools, and their surrounding communities, systematically predict the direction of academic fit for college goers. 

Bio

Rajeev Darolia is Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and of Education at the University of Missouri.  He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. His research interests include education policy and household finance, with recent projects focusing on student borrowing, students’ transitions from high school to college, and government-sponsored consumer credit programs. Dr. Darolia’s research has been published in education, economics, and public policy journals, including the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Public Economics, Education Finance and Policy, and Review of Higher Education. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, and the Association for Institutional Research. Dr. Darolia received a PhD in Public Policy and Public Administration from George Washington University where he was recognized with the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Association for Education Finance and Policy.  He also holds a master’s degree in economics and a bachelor’s degree in finance.