Economists have long recognized educational attainment decisions and labor market conditions as fundamentally interrelated. Traditional economic theory treats education as an investment in either human capital (Becker, 1964) or a signal of productivity (Spence, 1973). In both cases, individuals compare the cost of the investment today with its future benefit and then decide whether to invest. The labor market plays a central role in this comparison: Future benefits stem largely from how education will be valued by employers and costs depend, in part, on the opportunity cost of foregone time in the labor market. Public policy also plays an important part in these decisions by affecting the length, content and structure of the educational system as well as by shaping the labor market. Understanding of these complex relationships between policy, the labor market, and educational decisions is essential in designing optimal educational and labor market policies. In this panel, we focus on this important nexus. The first paper investigates the impact of U.S. minimum wage policy on the high school graduation margin of the educational investment decision, with particular emphasis on the effect on low socio-economic status (SES) teenagers. The second paper exploits a nationwide policy experiment in China to provide evidence that a model emphasizing the value of credentials predicts educational attainment decisions far better than a standard model of incremental human capital accumulation. This model also predicts the labor market returns to education far better than a naive Beckerian framework. The third paper estimates the relationship between local labor market conditions and community college graduation rates. Together, we believe the papers provide a substantial contribution toward better understanding the interactions between policy, the labor market, and educational attainment decisions which lie at the heart of many important policy decisions.