Nano Barahona

We are grateful to José Figueroa, J.D. Salas, and Nine von Dessauer for research assistance; Isaiah Andrews, Felipe Balmaceda, Ignacio Cuesta, Francisco Gallego, Andrés Gómez-Lobo, Larry Goulder, Tomas Guanziroli, Enrique Ide, Matti Liski, Juan Carlos Muñoz, Pauli Murto, André Trindade, and audiences at Aalto, Compass-Lexecon Madrid, IIOC-Boston, MIT, PUC-Chile, Stanford, TSE, UC Berkeley, UNAB, U. Andes, U. Montevideo, and U.

Online degrees are reshaping higher education by lowering tuition prices and reducing in-person program availability. In new research, Nano Barahona, Cauê Dobbin, and Sebastián Otero find that Brazil’s high online enrollment benefits those who need cheaper and more flexible options, but ultimately hurts young undergraduate students who are shifting away from higher-value in-person education options. Over the past decade, online college degrees have expanded rapidly.

We thank Claudia Allende, José Ignacio Cuesta, Liran Einav, Matthew Gentzkow, Gautam Gowrisankaran, Caroline Hoxby, Gastón Illanes, Pat Kline, Karthik Muralidharan, Cristóbal Otero, Kiki Pop-Eleches, Anna Popova, Paulo Somaini, and Pietro Tebaldi for helpful conversations and suggestions, and to seminar participants at Chicago Booth, Northwestern University, Stanford University, University of Tokyo, University of Michigan, FGV Sao Paulo, INSPER, PUC Rio, Arizona State University, UC Berkeley,...