I use nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Survey (ELS) to update the literature on returns to community college education. I compare the experiences of the ELS cohort that graduated high school in 2004 with those of the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) cohort that graduated high school more than a decade earlier, in 1992. I estimate that community college students from the ELS cohort were more likely to be employed, and that those who were earned about 21 percent more than comparable peers with only a high school education. This estimate is at least as large as that observed for the NELS cohort, though I find some evidence that the value of an associate's degree is smaller for the more recent cohort. I compare these results with those from the burgeoning body of research using state administrative data to answer similar questions.

中文翻译：

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社区大学的教育回报：教育纵向调查的新证据

我使用来自教育纵向调查（ELS）的具有国家代表性的数据来​​更新有关社区大学教育收益的文献。我比较了2004年高中毕业的ELS队列的经验和1992年10年前更早毕业的国家教育纵向调查（NELS）队列的经验。我估计，来自ELS队列的社区大学生是相比那些只接受过高中教育的同龄人，他们的收入要高出约21％。尽管我发现一些证据表明，对于最近的队列，副学士学位的价值较小，但这一估计值至少与对NELS队列观察到的估计值一样大。