Jeffrey Smith, Professor of University of Michigan

We consider the effects of student ability, college quality, and the interaction between the two on academic outcomes and future earnings. Both ability and college quality strongly improve outcomes and earnings. We find little evidence to support the “mismatch” hypothesis that college quality and ability interact in substantively important ways. All students benefit from attending higher quality colleges. Resorting students to eliminate mismatch, without changing the capacity of the current college network, would raise expected graduation rates by only 0.6 percentage points and mean earnings by $400 per year. The substantial gains for students who move to higher quality colleges under this reshuffling cancel out the losses of students who move down.