The Value Added of Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs to Student Outcomes: Evidence from Colombia

Abstract

We estimate the value added of short-cycle higher education programs (two or three years long) to student academic and labor market outcomes. We exploit administrative data from Colombia to control for a rich set of student, peer, and local choice set characteristics. We find that program value added accounts for 60-70 percent of the variation in graduation and labor market outcomes and varies greatly across programs, across and especially within fields of study. Value-added estimates are strongly correlated with the corresponding outcomes but not with other commonly used quality measures. Value-added to labor market outcomes is greater for programs that are longer, older, taught by more specialized institutions, and offered in larger cities. We caution against the use of program rankings, which appear highly sensitive to the underlying outcome or value-added metric.

Keywords: Short-cycle programs, value added, quality, higher education