"A college degree can be a ticket out of poverty." Yet, only 22% of the country's Black population and 15% of the Hispanic population have a minimum of a bachelor's degree, compared with over one-half of Asians and about one-third of whites. Strong academic success in foundation courses and courses that fulfill general education…

The success of policy interventions is frequently stymied by the inability to induce take-up in target populations. In this article, I show that local advertising in combination with small financial lotteries increases the likelihood that low-income students apply for and receive state aid. I isolate causal impacts by estimating the change in…

We examine the impacts of being awarded a Cal Grant, among the most generous state merit aid programs. We exploit variation in eligibility rules using GPA and family income cutoffs that are ex ante unknown to applicants. Cal Grant eligibility increases degree completion by 2 to 5 percentage points in our reduced form estimates. Cal Grant also…

College fees and tuition are rising--430 percent since 1982. Student borrowing for college has more than doubled since 1998, and about 50 percent of lower-income students head to college following high school, compared to 80 percent of high-income students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Various public school districts…

In September 2002, the California Legislature adopted Supplemental Report Language (SRL) directing the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) to convene a task force to examine alternative delivery systems for the State's Cal Grant program. This report responds to that legislative request. The recommendations contained in this report…

The way public college students finance college was studied, based on student resource and expenditure surveys from four states: Arizona, California, New York, and Wisconsin. Comparisons were made of demographic and academic variables, as well as expenditure patterns of students receiving different kinds of aid. The following four aid recipient…