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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-116). Also available via the World Wide Web.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis advisor: Karen D. Arnold / As students increasingly incur high amounts of debt for their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and the human capital framework (Becker, 1993), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals' trajectory into adulthood. A total of 50 interviews were conducted with young adults who had incurred $30,000 to $180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes. The findings explore how four categories of students -<italic>Insiders, Entrepreneurs, Pioneers, and New Moneys</italic>- varied along dimensions of economic and cultural wealth, and experienced their college search, college education, and transition to the workforce differently. The findings point to the immense role that habitus (Bourdieu, 1986) plays in shaping borrowers' educational experiences and post-graduation outcomes: Individuals' embodied cultural capital shaped their educational experiences and interactions with institutions and the labor market. Those who had high levels of cultural resources tended to have a more rigorous college search, stronger academic orientation, and greater student involvement during college. Compared to other students, they were more likely to transition to high-paying, high-status professional positions after graduation and attend graduate school. In contrast, individuals with low cultural resources tended to have a more casual college search, were more prone to encountering errors with their financial aid, spent a great deal of time working during college, and later faced underemployment in the labor market. They were less likely to report benefiting from a social network and their credential in the labor market and more likely to express regret about their debt and college education. The findings illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, and suggest that loans can serve as a form of social reproduction. A conceptual model outlines the factors associated with incurring high levels of debt and illustrates how they relate to borrowers' college experiences and lives post-graduation. In highlighting how debt exacerbates social inequities and the risks it can pose to students, especially students with low income and cultural resources, the findings call for higher education institutions to conduct a comprehensive review of their practices and services from the time students apply to college to after they graduate. Enhanced supports at high schools and community organizations can also assist families, particularly in encouraging participation in early savings plans and strengthening their financial literacy. Additionally, increased governmental scrutiny of borrowing can help protect students from over-indebtedness. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of human capital and its importance for earnings inequality and taxation. Human capital is typically defined as the stock of knowledge or skills acquired through education and working experience. The first chapter analyzes student borrowing behaviors in postsecondary education in the United States, the second chapter studies cross-country differences in earnings inequality within an endogenous growth model of human capital accumulation, and the third chapter examines the impact of endogenous human capital formations over a life-cycle on optimal fiscal policy. In Chapter 1, I document that new federal student loans for higher education in the United States have risen more than 5 times over the past 20 years. What caused this dramatic increase? I develop a heterogeneous life-cycle model of human capital accumulation to analyze individual college and borrowing decisions. Using this framework, I assess the quantitative contributions of changes in the college wage premium, college costs, maximum borrowing limits, and loan interest rates to explain the significant rise of federal student loans. I find that the calibrated model accounts for 57 percent of the actual increase in loans from 1990 to 2011. Increases in the college wage premium and college costs are important factors in generating the sharp rise in loans and, particularly, the increase in the fraction of borrowers and borrowing amounts. The expansion of credit availability and decreased loan interest rates have a relatively minimal impact on individual college and borrowing decisions. Chapter 2 explores why earnings inequality has been substantially higher in the US than in European countries over the last 30 years. I focus on the role of differences in tax progressivity, intergenerational earnings persistence, returns to education investments, and public education spending. I develop a growth model of human capital accumulation, and show analytically how those factors affect the dynamics of earnings inequality. The calibrated model accounts for 31 percent of the observed differences in earnings inequality between European countries and the US for 2003-07. Differences in returns to education investments and intergenerational earnings persistence are quantitatively important, suggesting the potential role of educational policy in ameliorating rising earnings inequality. Chapter 3, written jointly with Martin Gervais, analyzes the role of endogenous human capital accumulation in shaping optimal fiscal policy within a life-cycle growth model. We show that when investment in human capital is not verifiable---making the tax code incomplete---a non-zero capital income tax becomes optimal in order to alleviate the distortionary effects of the labor income tax on investment in human capital. This is true even if the government has access to a full set of age-dependent labor and capital income taxes. The main result is in sharp contrast to the finding in Jones et al. (1997) that all interest taxes are zero in infinitely-lived agent models with endogenous human capital formation.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of labor markets, focusing on the use of micro level data and computational modeling to study the interaction of unemployment with various aspects of the macroeconomy. I address the fact that frictions in the labor market carry over into other dimensions of firms' and workers' decisions, such as a firm's incentive to utilize its current labor force, workers' participation in the labor market, and the decision to acquire or discharge debt. In Chapter 1, I study involuntary part-time employment over the business cycle. I document that the population at work part-time for economic reasons ($PTE$) is countercyclical, volatile, and transitory. Workers in $PTE$ are nearly three times more likely than the unemployed to return to full-time work in a given month, and seven times more likely than full-time workers to become unemployed. Using household survey data, I demonstrate that cyclical fluctuations in $PTE$ come from changes in the transition rates between full-time and part-time employment rather than between part-time and unemployment. Moreover, these movements are primarily due to within-job changes in hours. Accordingly, I model part-time work focusing on a firm's decision to hire, fire, or partially utilize its labor force. Firms in the model are heterogeneous in size and productivity, and are subject to search frictions. The model produces firm-level utilization of part-time employment which is consistent with observed worker flows, and varies across the size and age distributions of firms. Over the business cycle, the model matches the observed relative volatility of unemployment and $PTE$. Part-time labor utilization by firms increases the volatility of vacancies and unemployment in the model relative to the case with only an extensive margin. Chapter 2 studies the interaction of a participation margin in a labor market search model. Introducing a participation margin of whether or not to actively search for a job requires the use of large idiosyncratic shocks to workers' participation incentives in order to match monthly labor flows in the data. If we measure the participation transitions of workers outside of employment where search decisions are observable and apply this same transition process to employed workers, any search model will overstate the transition of workers out of employment to nonparticipation. Allowing the participation transition of workers to depend on their employment state fixes these flows, but this transition process is unobservable for employed workers. Taking advantage of the longer panel of the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participants, I estimate the markov process for participation transitions of employed workers using their observed search behavior before and after an employment spell. The difference in the transition process measured for employed and nonemployed workers is consistent with an interpretation of attachment to the labor force. I build a directed search model with a labor force participation margin subject to employment-dependent shocks and show that it can match the labor market flows in US data. Chapter 3, which is jointly authored with Chander S. Kochar, investigates the effects of student loans on labor market outcomes. The student loan market is the second largest source of household debt in the United States, with $1.2 trillion in outstanding debt. Unlike other sources of unsecured credit, student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Using data on college graduates from the 1993/03 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, we first identify that student loan debt has a significant negative effect on students' earnings after graduation. We show that the inability to discharge debt in bankruptcy is critical to produce this result within a simple search theoretic framework. We propose a richer model with student loan debt and a delinquency/default decision to study the effects of recent changes to student loan policies on the labor market and delinquency outcomes of college graduates.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-203).

Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Quality in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / This study aims to measure the service quality with student loans that are provided by the Finance Department of a University of Technology (UoT). In the current academic environment, it is critical for a Finance Department to provide high quality of services to enable students fulfilling their academic performance. However, if the service quality of Finance Department is not up to standard, then students (customers) more likely to struggle in receiving all supporting financial aids for their studies. This will further impact on their whole academic life negatively. Based on the relevant literature, SERVQUAL model is one of the classical tools that were commonly used to measure the quality of services. Thus, this study applied SERVQUAL model to measure the service quality that provided by the Finance Department at the UoT. A combination of both qualitative and quantitative research approach was conducted in this study. Data were collected through interviews with staff members (n1=15) and a structured questionnaires for students (n2=43). All the key variables from the questionnaire and interview questions were derived from relevant literature. The reliability of dataset was tested through Cronbach’s Alpha value. Data were analysed through SPSS, MoonStats and Excel worksheet. The personal information of all the participants was protected. The findings revealed that there is a gap between students expectation and staff members perception towards the service quality that provided by the Finance Department. Students were generally satisfied with the service quality although staff members perceived that they have made efforts in providing good quality services to them. However, there are areas needs improvements in the service process such as management commitment, employee involvement, regular training programmes for skill development, and etc. This study further recommends that the financing office needs to use SERVQUAL model as an effective tool to track service delivery patterns and its nature of administration along tangibles, unwavering quality, responsiveness, confirmation and compassion measurements within the department. Moreover, SERVQUAL model can be used an useful approach to other service sector for quality improvements within the university.

Thesis advisor: Erika Sabbath / As college degrees become increasingly standard expectations for middle-to-high wage positions in the workforce, growing numbers of children and parents in the United States are accruing and repaying loans for postsecondary education. At the same time, the United States is witnessing unprecedented rates of longevity and a subsequent need for more intentional financial planning for retirement that starts earlier in life. The goal of this three-paper dissertation is to explore how student loans are experienced within families and discover the ways in which borrowers of different ages perceive and prioritize retirement and longevity-planning in light of their student loans. Utilizing qualitative and quantitative data collected through a concurrent triangulation mixed methods study design, the first two papers explored how student loan borrowers make, negotiate, and experience student loans within their family of origin. Paper 1 focused on the family context of borrowers repaying loans for their own education, and Paper 2 focused on the family context of borrowers repaying loans for a child or grandchildren education, several of whom were also repaying additional loans for their own educational expenses. Ultimately, the ways in which families communicated about student loans during repayment played at least a partial role in how they experienced the loans as part of their overall family dynamics. Shifting from a focus on family dynamics to longevity planning, Paper 3 focused on ways in which borrowers perceive and plan for longevity in light of the loans they carry for themselves and/or family members. Results suggest that planning for future financial security for oneself and/or family members may be less achievable with the presence of student loan debt. The main contribution of this dissertation is its attempt to understand the ways in which borrowers experience student loans in family systems and longevity planning contexts. This dissertation has also highlighted gaps in knowledge that policymakers, practitioners, and scholars can begin to address with current and potential student loan borrowers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of the changes to federal student aid, which were implemented on July 1, 2012, on student loan debt in Mississippi’s publicly-supported community colleges, particularly the change in the Estimated Family Contribution. The literature indicates a national epidemic of student borrowing. This research could provide Mississippi community college administrators the opportunity to observe and evaluate actual changes and to better understand the problem of student loan debt, which is escalating nationally. This study is expected to provide community college leaders a snapshot of the magnitude of the problem so that they can better understand if and how to respond. 8 of the 12 Mississippi community colleges participating in the federal direct student loan program were included in this study. Information on gender, ethnicity, and actual loan amount was gathered from each institution. Comparisons were made of the federal direct student loan debt before and after the July 1, 2012 changes. A quasi-experimental design was used to perform the study. Secondary data acquired from each institution were gathered on all students participating in the federal direct student loan program; therefore, random assignment was not used. The researcher utilized one-way ANOVAs for analyzing mean changes in actual loan amount. Chi-square analyses were used to determine significant changes in the number of loans incurred following the July 1, 2012 changes to federal student aid. Although the study identified significant differences in mean loan debt and numbers of loans incurred by Mississippi community colleges before and after the changes which became effective July 1, 2012, the changes were not in the direction anticipated. Annual student loan debt in the participating community colleges and the number of loans acquired, in the form of federal direct student loans, actually declined while the Estimated Family Contribution increased. Considerations for further studies are discussed.