Johnathan G. Conzelmann

Working Paper

The Diversification of Baccalaureate Education

This paper identifies a decades-long trend in 4-year postsecondary education in the United States — the production of bachelor's degrees has diversified significantly and consistently by field of study. I document this pattern in multiple data sources and show that secular within-college expansion of majors drives this trend. Peer institution effects, or colleges' tendency to identify with and aspire to other colleges, offers the most consistent explanation for the market's collective accommodation of increasing demand for a bachelor's degree since 1990.

Working Paper

IDR as Insurance: Employment Effects of Income-Driven Repayment Expansion

Moral hazard arguments suggest that Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans for student loans weaken work incentives by lowering the return to earnings. I test this in the United States (US) context using two cohorts of federal student loan borrowers and find the opposite — the 2009 IBR expansion increased employment probability by 2.1 percentage points, with effects concentrated among lower-achieving, default-risk borrowers consistent with IDR operating as insurance against non-payment. Contrary to moral hazard predictions, hours worked and wages did not decline on average, a result I attribute to the absence of salient income thresholds in US IDR design.

Working Paper

Skills, Majors, and Jobs: Does Higher Education Respond?

with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · NBER WP 31572 · Revisions requested, AEJ: Applied Economics

How do college students and postsecondary institutions react to changes in skill demand in the U.S. labor market? We quantify the magnitude and nature of response in the 4-year sector using a new measure of labor demand at the institution-major level that combines online job ads with geographic locations of alumni from a professional networking platform. Within a shift-share setup, we find that the 4-year sector responds. We estimate elasticities for undergraduate degrees and credits centered around 1.3, generally increasing with time horizon.

Published · JPAM 2025

Grads on the Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets for Graduates

with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (2025)

This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4-year institutions as for 2-year institutions. In one application, we quantify the extent of "brain drain" across areas and illustrate the importance of considering migration patterns of college graduates when estimating the social return on public investment in higher education.

Works in progress

• Workforce-aligned financial aid in Ohio and Kentucky (with Riley Acton & Raj Darolia)
• State Appropriations for Higher Education and Migration (with Andrew Simon, Shwetha Raghuraman, and Bess von der Heydt)
• Grade Inflation Mechanisms in U.S. Higher Education

Peer-reviewed publications

• Grads on the Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets for Graduates
  with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2025
• Modular Survey Design: Experimental Manipulation of Survey Length and Monetary Incentive Structure
  with Andy Peytchev, Emilia Peytcheva, Ashley Wilson, and Jennifer Wine · Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 2020
• Another Day, Another Dollar Metric? An Event History Analysis of Student Loan Repayment
  with T. Austin Lacy and Nichole D. Smith · Education Finance and Policy, 2019
• Federal Income-Driven Repayment Plans and Short-Term Student Loan Outcomes
  with T. Austin Lacy and Nichole D. Smith · Educational Researcher, 2018
• Strategic Use of FAFSA List Information by Colleges
  with Stephen R. Porter · Research in Higher Education, 2017
• Bounded Aspirations: Rural, African American High School Students and College Access
  with Darris R. Means, Ashley B. Clayton, Patti Baynes, and Paul D. Umbach · The Review of Higher Education, 2016

Book chapters

• College Majors and Programs: Choices and Returns
  with Stephanie Owen and Andrew Simon · Live Handbook of Education Policy Research, AEFP

I focus my teaching on transferable skills, policy relevance, and humanity. Students leave my courses able to analyze social and policy problems using economic theory and empirical tools.

Denison University

UNC–Chapel Hill (prior)

My research speaks directly to higher education and workforce policy. Below, my policy work and publications are organized broadly by level of government it most closely relates to — federal accountability and student-aid design, state and regional investment in education, and institutional or broader sector commentary.

Federal

• What the Migration of College Graduates Means for Earnings-Based Accountability Metrics
  with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · PEER Postsecondary Research Brief, 2025
• Financial and Student Loan (Il)literacy Among US College Students
  with T. Austin Lacy · Brookings Institution, Brown Center Chalkboard, 2018
• The Tension Between Student Loan Accountability and Income-Driven Repayment Plans
  with T. Austin Lacy and Nichole D. Smith · Brookings Institution, Brown Center Chalkboard, 2016
• The 2015–16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:16): Student Financial Aid Estimates
  with David Radwin, T. Austin Lacy, Joanna Wu, Stephen Lew, Jennifer Wine, and Peter Siegel · U.S. Dept. of Education, NCES, 2018

State & Regional

• Evaluation of Ohio and Kentucky Workforce aligned financial aid policies
  with Riley Acton & Raj Darolia · Arnold Ventures, Ohio Department of Higher Education · ongoing
• Understanding the Labor Markets for Graduates of UNC System Institutions
  with Steven Hemelt · North Carolina Education Futures Initiative, 2022

Institution & Sector Commentary

• How Higher Education Responds to Labor Market Demand
  with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2024
• New Data Show How Far Graduates Move from Their College, and Why It Matters
  with Steven Hemelt, Brad Hershbein, Shawn Martin, Andrew Simon, and Kevin Stange · W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2023
• The State of Financial Knowledge in College: New Evidence from a National Survey
  with Drew M. Anderson and T. Austin Lacy · RAND Working Paper, 2018