In this paper, we leverage detailed, individual-level student data to understand the relationships between family finances, merit-based aid, and first-year student retention. With three cohorts of student data that comprise family financial status, institutional merit scholarships, and many of the other known correlates of student retention, we…

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…

The admissions process used today in America's most selective colleges and universities is a classic case of interest group politics gone awry. Nobody champions or fights for smart, low-income students. The result is an admissions process reduced to a series of "preferences." Taken together with other widely-used admissions practices,…

This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid and illustrates the extent of efforts made by the states to assist postsecondary students. Information in this report is based on academic year 2014-15 data from the 46th Annual National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) survey. Data…

President Obama has proposed a financial aid policy whereby students who complete 100 hours of community service would receive a tax credit of US$4,000 for college. After lawmakers cut this proposal from previous legislation, the administration was tasked with studying the feasibility of implementation. However, the implications of the policy for…

The concentration of broad-based merit aid adoption in the southeastern United States has been well noted in the literature. However, there are states that have adopted broad-based merit aid programs outside of the Southeast. Guided by multiple theoretical frameworks, including innovation diffusion theory (e.g., Gray, 1973, 1994; Rogers, 2003),…

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictors of African-American enrollment at a private college. After a thorough literature review of college choice models, a set of quantitatively measured determinants were gleaned and identified for the statistical research and treatment. The set of predictors included high school grade point…

This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid and illustrates the extent of efforts made by the states to assist postsecondary students. Information in this report is based on academic year 2013-14 data from the 45th Annual NASSGAP survey. Data highlights include: (1) In the 2013-14 academic year, the…

This article uses findings from the 2012 Tuition Discounting Study (TDS) conducted by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) to provide a framework for institutional researchers to develop and adapt their own custom tuition discounting definitions and formulas. Under tuition discounting, colleges and…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

The increasing use by private colleges and universities of financial aid based on "merit", as opposed to based solely on financial need has caused many to raise concerns that this type of aid will go mainly to higher income students crowding out aid to lower income students. However, some analysts suggest that by attracting more "almost…

This report describes the findings from a series of descriptive analyses seeking to understand the potential relationship between college access and school poverty for high-achieving middle school students, focusing specifically on potential access to state merit-based grant funding. Researchers monitored the academic achievement of more than…

Since Georgia's "Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally" (HOPE) Scholarship was initiated in 1993, more than a dozen states have adopted similar state-sponsored merit-based financial aid programs. One recent concern on merit-based programs has focused on their unintended adverse effect on students' choosing science and engineering as…

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…

This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid and illustrates the extent of efforts made by the states to assist postsecondary students. Information in this report is based on academic year 2011-12 data from the 43rd Annual National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) survey. Data…