Paper Title
The Effect of Community College Attendance on the Early Career Outcomes of Minority Students: A Quantile Regression Approach

Abstract
This paper examines the effect that two-year college attendance has had on the labor market outcomes of Hispanic students relative to non-Hispanic students at different points in the conditional earnings distribution. The results suggest that within a sample of males drawn from the High School and Beyond survey, Hispanic workers that started at two-year colleges have a significant earnings premia (relative to whites) at both the bottom and the top of the conditional earnings distribution. The estimated effect is largest at the tenth percentile, which when combined with the fact that Hispanics tend to both disproportionately attend two-year colleges and disproportionately fall in the lower end of the conditional earnings distribution suggests that two-year college attendance might indeed be highly beneficial for Hispanic-Americans. In addition, the earnings of Hispanics that transferred to or started at four-year colleges are not statistically different from similar whites, providing further evidence that Hispanics, as well as blacks, that attend two-year colleges are able to cut into the wage differential much more so than other types of students. Keywords - Community Colleges; Returns to Higher Education; Black and Hispanic Students; Family Income.