Alumni Association

David Titus Immigration Policies and Human Capital: The Impact on Undocumented College Attendance Abstract: I estimate the impact of Universal E-Verify laws on the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics in the United States. I do so by implementing a series of event studies that account for staggered adoption across time, and I use a random forest algorithm as my primary approach for predicting undocumented status. My results indicate that Universal E-Verify laws lower the college attendance of undocumented Hispanics ages 18-24 by about 3.7 percentage points. This is a large effect, as I find that only 15.7 percent of undocumented Hispanics ages 18-24 in treated states were enrolled in college following the passage of the laws. This effect is robust to using logical imputation on non-citizen Hispanics to proxy undocumented immigrants, using a logit model instead of random forest, testing for migration spillover effects to bordering states, and considering potentially confounding impacts of other state-level policies. I explore potential mechanisms by developing a model explaining avenues through which Universal E-Verify can affect college education, and I test this model’s implications. I find suggestive evidence that the effect is driven by a negative labor market shock on undocumented adults ages 25-54, which likely leads to worse schooling for their children and renders college less attainable. These findings reveal that employment restrictions on working-age undocumented adults harm the human capital accumulation of undocumented children.

Mid-career professionals face unprecedented challenges in today's evolving job market. With shifting federal workforce policies, economic uncertainties, and technology's ongoing transformation of hiring processes, even seasoned workers find themselves navigating unfamiliar terrain. Yet for well-prepared candidates, the job market remains full of possibilities — if you know how to approach it. Join Cornell ILR School professor JR Keller as he demystifies the modern job search. Drawing from his extensive research in human resource studies, Professor Keller will share practical strategies for mastering digital recruiting platforms, maintaining work-life balance during transitions, and effectively presenting your professional narrative in today's fast-paced environment. Learn more and register. This conversation will offer experienced professionals the strategies they need to adapt, advance, and thrive, balancing career momentum with personal well-being in today's dynamic workplace. What You'll Learn How to navigate modern applicant tracking systems and digital hiring platformsHow to optimize your résumé and online presence for today's job marketThe role of career counselors and new AI coaching tools in job searchingA look at the current hiring landscape from both candidate and employer perspectives Speakers: JR Keller (Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies and EMHRM Program Director, ILR School) Beth Flynn-Ferry (Executive Director, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, ILR School)

Join one of the nation's leading Constitutional scholars, prolific author, and former senior advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security for a timely discussion of the past, present, and future of free expression at American universities. Speaker: Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University.

Yaling Xu Does Coursework Matter? Uncovering the Role of Skills in the Returns to College Abstract: The continuing shift of the U.S. economy toward a high-skill base has increased the demand for college-educated workers. To understand how higher education prepares students for this evolving economy, a large body of literature in labor economics has focused on the causes and consequences of college enrollment, institutional selectivity, and major choice. Much less attention has been paid to a key dimension that shapes the skills students acquire in college—coursework. In this paper, I scrape and compile a new dataset of detailed course descriptions from Texas public universities. Using a large language model (GPT-4), I extract the skills students are likely to acquire from each course, focusing on two widely taught and consistently identifiable domains: quantitative and writing. I then link these course-level skill measures to Texas administrative records that track students’ educational histories and quarterly earnings. To estimate the returns to coursework-based skills, I implement an instrumental variables strategy that exploits variation in course offerings across cohorts within the same major. I find substantial early-career earnings returns to coursework-based quantitative skills, but no detectable returns to writing skills. These returns are especially large for underrepresented minority (URM) students and for students in less quantitatively intensive majors, suggesting that expanding access to quantitative coursework within majors may serve as a new lever for narrowing racial earnings gaps.

Daphne Blakey

Senan Hogan Hennessy