Beyond the Old Boys’ Network: Social Networks and Job Finding at Community Colleges

Beyond the “Old Boys’ Network”: Social Networks and Job Finding at Community Colleges

Maria Zhu

Journal of Human Resources, November 2022

Maria Zhu

Economics Department

Center for Policy Research

Education

Labor

United States

Journal of Human Resources

Maria Zhu

Research and popular discourse on social networks in higher education have focused on elite universities, even though most students do not attend such institutions. This paper sheds novel light on how classmate networks at community colleges influence job finding.

Using data from a state community college system linked to matched employer-employee records, I exploit quasi-random variation in class section enrollment within courses to detect network effects.

I find students are significantly more likely to get a job at a classmate’s firm later than at the firm of a peer enrolled in a different section of the same course.