More than half of community college students nationwide intend to pursue a four-year degree; however, in Texas only one in four community college students transfer to four-year institutions successfully. Among students who do transfer to a Texas four-year institution, roughly 60 percent go on to graduate with a bachelor's degree. The result is…

This dissertation studies the market for higher education and impacts of higher education policy on the market. In the first chapter, I estimate the short-run elasticity of supply of higher education using the rollout of state merit grant programs as plausibly exogenous variation in student demand for in-state higher education. I find that public…

As populist forces stretch apart higher education and government, colleges lobby in measurable ways to secure scarce funding and respond to accountability regulations. The non-profit and corporate lobbying literature provides a basis of comparison to ask if colleges lobby like corporations, which have been successful lobbyists under challenging…

College typically pays off for low-income students, but not as much as it does for their peers. Low-income students, whose families earn $30,000 or less per year, comprise more than one-third of college students. "The Colleges Where Low-Income Students Get the Highest ROI" finds that low-income students have a lower return on investment…

This study investigated the relationship between institutional graduation rates of students with Pell grants and institutional/financial aid characteristics. Study findings suggest that increasing the proportion of Pell recipients was related to a decrease in Pell student graduation rates, while increasing institutional grants was associated with…

This Data Point uses data from the 2016/17 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:16/17). The study is a national survey of students who earned a bachelor's degree during the 2015-16 academic year. Students are surveyed at different time points to study change. The second collection was done in 2017, about 1 year after respondents…

Each year, National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) completes a survey regarding state-funded expenditures for postsecondary student financial aid. 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…

Efforts are underway by the Senate education committee to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Lawmakers are focused on establishing a state-federal partnership program to increase investments in higher education, providing more information to students and their families so they can make informed choices about where to go to college, and…

In recent decades, several dozen colleges and universities have instituted loan-reduction initiatives (LRIs), such as "no-loan" programs. Institutions frequently cast such initiatives as efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity on campus. Using a difference-in-differences analytic strategy with national institution-level data, we…

At the end of 2019, 43 million Americans owed over $1.5 trillion in federal student loans. The rapid increase in these balances over the past decade has led many to deem student debt a "crisis." Now, there is growing support among Democratic policymakers, and even some Republicans, to immediately cancel all or most of the federal…

Each year, National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP) completes a survey regarding state-funded expenditures for postsecondary student financial aid. This report, the 50th annual survey, represents data from academic year 2018-19. This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid…

At a time when Wisconsin faces severe workforce shortages in several key sectors and demand for skilled workers has skyrocketed, enrollment in the state's colleges and universities has generally been declining even faster than the national trend. Enrollments in Wisconsin across all public and private institutions were falling even prior to the…

This is the executive summary for the report, "A Little Help: Is Financial Aid Keeping College Affordable in Wisconsin?" This study finds that Wisconsin has not prioritized financial aid programs in recent years despite their potential benefits to the workforce and students, particularly low-income students and those of color. State…

Federal Work-Study (FWS) funding provides opportunities for campus-based employment to students as a way to pay for their college expenses. This issue of "DataPoints" finds community colleges receive only 18 percent of Federal Work-Study funds from the $1 billion appropriated to the program.

This study uses data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and Delta Cost Project to identify institutional predictors of bachelor's degree completion rates for Pell Grant recipients and nonrecipients at public and private not-for-profit 4-year institutions. Descriptive analyses show that Pell recipients are relatively…