Christopher Jepsen

Benefits of Alternatives to Conventional College

In a recent study, Christopher Jepsen and his co-authors (Peter Mueser and Kyung-Seong Jeon) use a person fixed effects model on US administrative data to study proprietary, or for-profit, postsecondary institutions. The researchers determine that attendance in certificate and associate's degree programs is associated with higher returns of more than 20 percent by five years after entry. The returns vary substantially by field of study, and these differences in field of study explain the difference in return by gender.

Mr Jepsen's main research areas are in labour economics and the economics of education. His current research agenda focuses on the labour-market returns to postsecondary schooling and the determinants of postsecondary achievement. Current projects also include broader topics such as differences in labour-market outcomes across demographic groups; the relationship between productivity, demographics and earnings; and differences in pensions between public and private sector workers.

Christopher Jepsen is Associate Professor of Economics at University College Dublin (UCD), where he has been since 2012. He is affiliated with the UCD Geary Institute for Public Policy. He is also a research fellow at IZA. From 2006 to 2012, Mr Jepsen was Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Kentucky, and he was a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California from 2000 to 2006. He received a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Grinnell College.