Smoothing the transition to college? The effect of Tech-Prep programs on educational attainment

By promoting articulation agreements between high schools and community colleges, Tech-Prep programs aim to smooth the transition to college for the middle majority of US high school students. This paper employs a family fixed effects approach to assess the effectiveness of Tech-Prep programs in increasing educational attainment. Using data from six rounds of the 1997 NLSY and controlling for both selection and within-family spillovers, I find that Tech-Prep programs help participants complete high school and encourage enrollment in two-year colleges. On the other hand, these gains come at the expense of four-year college enrollment, suggesting that Tech-Prep programs may divert students from four-year to two-year colleges in the years immediately following high school. While Tech-Prep programs appear to increase overall educational attainment, they may be falling short of their goal of promoting college enrollment among the middle majority.