Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Recent evidence indicates that college classmates influence employment outcomes for college graduates (e.g., Zimmerman 2015),yet there is no evidence on how school networks affect immigrant employment outcomes despite reasons to expect immigrant networks to operate much differently than native-born networks. This paper relies on a unique dataset of nearly 700,000 undergraduate students who enrolled as first-time freshmen in one of the 18 institutions of the City University of New York (CUNY) over the years 1999 to 2015.  Reflecting the composition of New York City, approximately 37 percent of CUNY students were born outside the mainland US hailing from more than 200 countries and regions across the world.  In addition to tracking students’ pre-college academic achievement, basic demographic data, and college outcomes, the data record labor market outcomes for students both during and after they leave the CUNY system. A key feature of these employment data is that we can match students to specific establishments and track the outcomes of students who complete their degrees as well as those who do not complete their degrees. Using these data, we identify the effect of in-school networks on the probability of employment (and employment in the same establishment) with a design that resembles a difference-in-difference. Specifically, we compare the probability that two same-race immigrant individuals in the same network (school-major-entry year) work in the same establishment relative to two individuals in the same school-major but a different cohort and relative to two individuals in the same cohort but different school-major. For comparison, we also estimate school network effects for native-born. Taken together, these analyses shed light on the role that networks play in employment outcomes for immigrants who have chosen to invest in their human capital by enrolling in college as well as the potential role of networks in explaining differential returns to education between immigrant and native-born.