Getting Across the Finish Line: How to Boost Completion Rates for Underrepresented Student Groups

There remains a gap in college completion rates for Black and Hispanic students. Universities have focused on creating a diverse student body (peer effects), a diverse faculty (role model effects) and on providing resources to boost completion rates. This paper tests these effects in a panel data set of 9800 observations from 1493 universities over 2011–2018. Regression results show peer effects disappear when role model effects are included suggesting that previous literature testing only peer effects could be suffering from omitted variable bias. Faculty salaries and the percentage of full-time faculty are also highly significant in helping close the gap.