New York State (NYS) launched the Excelsior Scholarship in 2017. It is designed to make college tuition-free for students who attend publicly funded institutions and meet certain criteria. Is this scholarship a good investment for taxpayers of NYS? How long does it take taxpayers to recover their investment? This case analysis takes a perspective…

Dropout of university students can have negative consequences for students' futures as well as for university income. University systems with a multiple enrollment policy may offer students benefits, such as a second chance to graduate instead of dropping out. However, little is known about the outcome constellations (graduation, dropout) of…

Contrary to the overall tendency to increase student participation in the financing of higher education, Estonia abolished student tuition fees in 2013. We study the effects of this reform on the students' access to and progress in higher education, concentrating mostly on the changes in probabilities of rural and remote students being admitted…

In this article, I utilize a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of Tulsa Achieves--a prevalent and understudied type of tuition-free college program. In contrast to concerns regarding tuition-free community college suppressing bachelor's degree attainment, I find that Tulsa Achieves increased the likelihood of transferring to…

We generate selection-adjusted NPV and IRR estimates for a bachelor's degree in the U.S. which account for time-to-graduation, debt financing and tuition levels. We find that a college degree is generally worthwhile, but the private value of the investment is a declining function of time-to-graduation. Selection-adjustments show that for students…

Four-year graduation rates have become a key performance measure for the institutions of higher education. However, with less than 30% of the first-time freshmen being able to graduate in four years from a four-year program suggests an investigation of the factors that affect a timely progress of students through their course of study. Many would…

We used the recent introduction of general tuition fees at public universities in several of the German federal states as a natural experiment to identify whether tuition fees reduce the time to graduation and the extent to which they do so. We employed a difference-in-differences approach with the states that introduced fees as the treatment…

When colleges turned to online learning, they opened the door for a number of students who might have only dreamed of pursuing a degree or credential. In 2006, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) surveyed prospective adult students without a college degree and discovered that they were three times more likely to enroll in…

The cost of higher education continues to climb, while calls for increased institutional accountability and the value of a "four-year degree" are ever present. This research sought to identify factors by which consumers might predict four-year graduation rates at institutions within the CCCU. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis of data…

In recent decades, as pressures have mounted to raise K-12 academic standards and move more students into and through college, high schools have provided a growing array of programs that offer college-level content. Frequent claims suggest that these programs raise academic standards, prepare students for college, and shorten the time to a…

On the surface, America has a great higher education system that works beautifully. Our colleges and universities, we are often told, are the best in the world. They consistently dominate the international rankings. A number of Nobel Prize award winners are closely associated with American institutions. Foreign students flock to our country to…

This overview of postsecondary education in the United States reviews the dramatic changes over the past fifty years in the students who go to college, the institutions that produce higher education, and the ways it is financed. The article, by Sandy Baum, Charles Kurose, and Michael McPherson, creates the context for the articles that follow on…

Among all the uncertainty colleges face in this recession, they are sure of one thing: Families are feeling less than confident about their ability to pay for higher education. In response, colleges are creating more student-aid programs or expanding existing ones. Others are offering students additional counseling or a grace period for paying…

Despite the substantial size of the population, relatively little research has focused on the status and experiences of undergraduate parents. Using descriptive analyses of data from the NPSAS:04, this study provides a starting point for campus administrators, public policymakers, and educational researchers who seek to identify ways to better…

In this study, the authors used multivariate statistical analysis to examine the impact of cost on the likelihood that a person will both enroll in and complete a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. They considered both the "explicit" cost of paying tuition and the "implicit" cost, or opportunity cost, of earnings foregone while in…