The provision of grant aid is important to students' postsecondary opportunities and success. It is well established that grant aid increases the probability of enrollment in postsecondary education. A slate of studies in recent years has extended this research to examine whether grant aid also has an impact on persistence and degree attainment.…

Facing the increased demand for accountability, colleges and universities nationwide embarked on various initiatives to increase college attainment. One such effort is the Florida state statute, commonly referred to as excess hour surcharge policy, which was implemented at 12 state universities effective July 2009. The Florida legislature intends…

This study examines the relationship between Cycle 1 of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) College Success Initiative and students' preparation for, enrollment in, and persistence in college. Rates of FAFSA submission, two-year applications, four-year applications, and on-time college enrollment all significantly increased during Cycle…

Inequalities do not end once students enter higher education. Yet, the majority of papers on the effectiveness of higher education aid examine its impact on college enrolment. In this paper, we provide evidence on the causal impact of means-tested but otherwise unconditional financial aid on the outcomes of students who have already enrolled in…

Using the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS 2002), a unique survey that tracks High School sophomores to young adulthood, we estimate the relationship between student loan debt, educational attainment, and tenure choice. We improve upon prior studies by matching pre-treatment characteristics through coarsened exact matching (CEM) and…

In this study, I exploit exogenous differences in institutional policies regarding the treatment of home equity in grant aid allocation to estimate a causal impact of institutional grant aid on college choice. Because institutional grant aid is typically not awarded randomly, the college-estimated home equity value serves as an instrumental…

We investigate how undergraduates' financial aid packages affect their subsequent donative behavior as alumni. The empirical work is based upon micro data on alumni giving at an anonymous research university. We focus on three types of financial aid, scholarships, loans, and campus jobs. A novel aspect of our modeling strategy is that, consistent…

This article examines debt burden among college graduates and contributes to previous research by incorporating institutional and state characteristics. Utilizing a combination of national datasets and zero-one inflated beta regression, we find several major themes. First, family income and college experiences are strongly associated with the…

The main objective of this study is to estimate the association between financial aid and college dropout rates of postsecondary students in Colombia. We use a unique dataset from the Colombian Ministry of Education that includes all enrolled college students in the country between 1998 and 2008. Logistic regression is used to identify the…

This study investigates the impact that different financial aid packages have on student stopout, reenrollment, and graduation probabilities. The authors simulate how various financial aid packaging regimes affect the occurrence and timing of these events. Their findings indicate that the number and duration of enrollment and stopout spells affect…

Previous research has shown that participation in programs designed to connect students to campus can increase student success and retention. However, very little of this research has controlled for selections bias. The purpose of this study was to use propensity score matching to control for selection bias while analyzing three campus connection…

Using data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), this dissertation focuses on the forms of capital (resources) at the individual, school and state levels that influence the probability of college enrollment. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to three interrelated articles that comprise Chapters 2 through 4. Chapter 2…

In this article, the author investigates the relationship between undergraduate student loan debt and degree attainment. Using data from the Beginning Postsecondary Student (BPS) surveys in 1995-1996 and 2000-2001, she examines whether the relationship between debt and degree attainment is different for students with different parental income…