Abstract:

Although the monetary costs of higher education are a barrier for many, the time costs are also significant. Every hour a student spends in class cannot be allocated to any other activity and, moreover, success usually relies on significant time spent studying outside of class. These time costs are not well understood due to data limitations and endogenous course selection. We estimate the causal effect of credit hours on high value leisure time using linked administrative data on both campus departures and academic history at the United States Air Force Academy. Cadet fixed effect estimates show each credit hour costs students about 7 hours of high value leisure per semester, while an IV strategy leveraging exogenous variation to graduation requirements suggests the true cost may exceed 17 hours per credit. Applying a simple labor-leisure model, we estimate an elasticity of substitution between -0.15 and -0.38.