The "Student FAFSA Completion Report" (2023) is submitted pursuant to Education Article § 7-212, Annotated Code of Maryland, which requires the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS) Center to annually produce, on or before December 15th of each year, beginning in 2023 and ending in 2028, on the submission and completion of the Free…

Summer melt refers to applicants who showed intentions of starting college, but ultimately did not attend. The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate a text messaging intervention offered to community college applicants aimed at reducing summer melt of all students, but particularly first-generation students. Applicants often face…

Do students respond to sticker prices or actual prices when applying to college? These costs differ for students eligible for financial aid. Students who do not understand this may not apply to some colleges because of the perceived high cost. We test for this form of "sticker shock" using College Board data on SAT scores sends, as a…

Do nudge interventions that have generated positive impacts at a local level maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? What specific mechanisms explain the positive impacts of promising smaller-scale nudges? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign to encourage students to…

Every year, the U.S. Department of Education selects hundreds of thousands of low-income students to provide additional documentation to corroborate their financial aid eligibility in a process known as verification. Though many are concerned about the potential deleterious effects of being selected, to date, studies are limited to descriptive…

Every year, the U.S. Department of Education selects hundreds of thousands of low-income students to provide additional documentation to corroborate their financial aid eligibility in a process known as verification. Although many are concerned about the potential deleterious effects of being selected, to date, studies are limited to descriptive…

A growing body of research indicates that proactive outreach from high schools and college access organizations about college preparation tasks, and specifically focusing on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), results in increased college enrollment. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role of colleges…

The 2024 Nebraska Higher Education Progress Report is the 18th annual progress report designed to provide the Nebraska Legislature with comparative statistics to monitor and evaluate progress toward achieving three key priorities for Nebraska's postsecondary education system. These priorities were developed by the 2003 LR 174 Higher Education Task…

Low-income students, even those with strong academic credentials, are unlikely to attend a highly selective college. With a field experiment, we test an intervention to increase enrollment of low-income students at the highly selective University of Michigan. We contact students (as well as their parents and principals) with an encouragement to…

There is currently a great deal of interest in the potential of reductions in or elimination of the cost of college attendance for students (here referred to as college subsidies) to increase equitable access to higher education. A number of Democratic presidential candidates have advanced proposals for such programs. However, because colleges and…

Tuition discounting (TD), a practice whereby institutional grants are used to subsidize a student's educational expense, has become a common practice at four-year institutions. TDs impact on enrollments, financial aid, and budgets continues to increase, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability of the practice. Drawing upon Breneman's…

The goal of equal educational opportunity remains unrealized at most of America's colleges. The children of wealth and privilege fill nearly all the seats at these institutions, while the children of poverty are almost completely absent. Far too often, a young person's educational path is determined not by intellect, but by parental income. That a…

This manuscript reviews issues that differentiate traditional academic cheating from course misconduct that is motivated by a desire to defraud financial aid services in the U.S. Past research on college student cheating has assumed that cheaters are driven by an incentive to obtain undeserved grades in college in order to ultimately obtain a…

This report is a compendium of college access-related data that is intended to provide a detailed overview of Baltimore City Schools (City Schools) students' experiences preparing for, enrolling in, and completing postsecondary education. Although constrained in its scope, this report is offered in light of the fact that, more and more,…

Equity gaps in our society have existed and persisted over time. Recent events have further emphasized racial injustices in society. The disproportionate health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on people of color have exacerbated existing inequities, leading to renewed calls for social justice. The COVID-19 crisis is also shedding light…