Research

Abstract: Do future schooling opportunities shape current educational decisions? In this paper, I explore a large expansion in the supply of free technical and traditional higher education institutions (HEI) in Brazil to assess whether exposure to new HEIs shifted educational trajectories and pre-college human capital accumulation for local teenagers. Using a novel dataset on HEI roll-out combined with rich administrative data, I measure the effect of receiving an HEI on local students' pre-college outcomes, college attendance, and later labor market outcomes. Employing a staggered differences-in-differences approach, I find that the arrival of an HEI meaningfully increases students' test scores in middle school and graduation from high school. Treated students go on to experience higher college enrollment, wages, and employment in the formal sector. Non-white students who are exposed to an HEI are 3.5% more likely to continue to high school after completing primary education, with no effects on progression for white students. Although effects on all other pre-college education outcomes are similar by race, wage gains in the formal labor market are concentrated among white individuals. Addressing potential mechanisms, I find that higher education expansion significantly decreases the share of 9th-graders working outside the household in treated municipalities, consistent with the important trade-off between schooling and work in low- and middle-income contexts.