secondary schooling a high school graduate receives, delay can be costly in terms of
reduced future earnings.
This paper investigates the determinants of college completion and dropout and,
in particular, the impact of delayed entry on college completion and dropout. It expands
upon the existing research tradition by specifying the duration of college attendance until
exit as influenced by an endogenous waiting duration until college enrollment (the delay
between first college enrollment and high school graduation), family background, personal
characteristics, and local labor market conditions. The aim of this paper is to identify the
effect of these covariates on college duration, that is, time to graduation and dropout.
To estimate the determinants of the duration of college attendance, while
accounting for the effect of the (possibly) endogenous waiting time until enrollment, two
bivariate discrete-time hazard models with competing risks are estimated. In the first, we
jointly model the duration until college enrollment and the duration of college attendance
until exit. For the duration until college enrollment, no distinction is made between those
who enroll in a two-year versus four year institutions, since some of those who initially
enroll in a two-year institution may ultimately attain a four-year degree. Thus, the
standard discrete-time hazard approach is used to model this duration (Kiefer, 1988, Han
and Hausman, 1990; Meyer, 1990). In the empirical model we allow college exit to occur
for two reasons: dropout and graduation. Thus, the duration of college attendance is