‘College Expansion and Unequal Access to Education in Peru’ with José Flor-Toro
Current Version:
Enrollment gaps are pervasive in developing countries, despite public investment and legislation aimed at democratizing access to college. We study the effects of opening new college campuses in underserved areas, a commonly proposed policy to reduce such gaps. Using Peruvian census data to estimate a difference in differences model, we find that enrollment increased by about 1p.p. or 10% in the short term. However, estimated effects for minority students are only half the size of others, widening preexisting gaps. To understand the drivers of this result, we assemble a new administrative dataset on college applications and build a model of education demand with heterogeneity in preferences and probability of admission. The results show that the interaction of initial advantage and meritocratic criteria increases educational inequality: even though proximity is highly valued by less-advantaged students, meritocratic admission criteria hinder poor and minority students, who disproportionately attend lower-quality high schools. Our counterfactuals show that addressing high school quality disparities is more likely to reduce college enrollment inequality than further supply expansions.