In light of recent, state-level actions banning racial preference in college admissions decisions, we investigate how whites and minorities differ in their college-going behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we estimate a sequential model of college attendance and graduation decisions that allows correlations among the errors. Our estimates reveal that minorities are more likely than observationally equivalent whites to attend colleges of all quality levels. Being a minority has a positive effect on graduation probabilities, but, overall, minorities are less likely than their white counterparts to complete college because they possess fewer favorable unobserved factors.

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to distinguish empirically between mover—stayer, “search good,” and “experience good” models of job mobility. We estimate wage models in which the pattern of overall job mobility affects both the level and tenure slope of the log-wage path. After controlling for the correlation between mobility patterns and time-constant person- and job-specific unobservables, we find that workers who undergo persistent mobility have lower log-wage paths than less mobile workers. This finding is consistent with models in which job mobility is driven by time-varying unobservables, such as “experience good” models, where changes in perceived match quality cause turnover.