Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Financial Aid and Students' College Decisions: Evidence from the District of Columbia's Tuition Assistance Grant Program

Contents:

Author Info

  • Katharine Abraham
  • Melissa A. Clark

Abstract

The District of Columbia's Tuition Assistance Grant Program (DCTAG), instituted in 1999, allows DC residents to attend public colleges and universities throughout the country at considerably lower in-state tuition rates. We use the sharp decline in the price of public colleges and universities faced by residents of the District of Columbia under DCTAG to estimate the effects of price on students' college application and enrollment decisions. Using a sample of students from nearby large cities as a control group, we find that the number and share of DC residents applying to four-year colleges increased substantially under the program, and students were considerably more likely to apply to colleges that were eligible for the subsidy. Freshmen enrollments of DC residents also increased substantially at eligible institutions, although the effect on overall freshmen enrollments of DC residents was fairly modest, suggesting that in its first year the subsidy had more of an impact on where students chose to attend than on whether they chose to attend college at all.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w10112.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 10112.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Nov 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10112

Note: CF LS PE
Contact details of provider:
Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Phone: 617-868-3900
Email:
Web page: http://www.nber.org
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 2004. "Would the Elimination of Affirmative Action Affect Highly Qualified Minority Applicants? Evidence from California and Texas," NBER Working Papers 10366, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. David M. Linsenmeier & Harvey S. Rosen & Cecilia Elena Rouse, 2002. "Financial Aid Packages and College Enrollment Decisions: An Econometric Case Study," NBER Working Papers 9228, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Thomas J. Kane, 2003. "A Quasi-Experimental Estimate of the Impact of Financial Aid on College-Going," NBER Working Papers 9703, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Susan Dynarski, 2002. "The Behavioral and Distributional Implications of Aid for College," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 279-285, May.
  5. Susan M. Dynarski, 1999. "Does Aid Matter? Measuring the Effect of Student Aid on College Attendance and Completion," NBER Working Papers 7422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Susan Dynarski, 2000. "Hope for Whom? Financial Aid for the Middle Class and Its Impact on College Attendance," NBER Working Papers 7756, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. David Deming & Susan Dynarski, 2009. "Into College, Out of Poverty? Policies to Increase the Postsecondary Attainment of the Poor," NBER Working Papers 15387, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Waddell, Glen R. & Singell Jr., Larry D., 2011. "Do no-loan policies change the matriculation patterns of low-income students?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 203-214, April.
  3. Philippe Belley & Marc Frenette & Lance Lochner, 2011. "Post-Secondary Attendance by Parental Income in the U.S. and Canada: What Role for Financial Aid Policy?," NBER Working Papers 17218, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Rodney Andrews & Stephen DesJardins & Vimal Ranchhod, 2009. "The Effects of the Kalamazoo Promise on College Choice," SALDRU Working Papers 34, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
  5. Clark, Melissa & Rothstein, Jesse & Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore, 2009. "Selection bias in college admissions test scores," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 295-307, June.
  6. Lisa M. Dickson & Matea Pender, 2010. "Do In-State Tuition Benefits Affect the Enrollment of Non-Citizens? Evidence from Universities in Texas," UMBC Economics Department Working Papers 10-125, UMBC Department of Economics.
  7. Robert Bifulco & Jason M. Fletcher & Sun Jung Oh & Stephen L. Ross, 2012. "Do Classmate Effects Fade Out?," Working papers 2012-43, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
  8. Freeman, James A. & Hirsch, Barry T., 2007. "College Majors and the Knowledge Content of Jobs," IZA Discussion Papers 2941, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  9. Thomas Kane, 2004. "Evaluating the Impact of the D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant Program," NBER Working Papers 10658, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Viktor Steiner & Katharina Wrohlich, 2008. "Financial Student Aid and Enrollment into Higher Education: New Evidence from Germany," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 805, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  11. Dynarski, Susan & Scott-Clayton, Judith, 2008. "Complexity and Targeting in Federal Student Aid: A Quantitative Analysis," Working Paper Series rwp08-005, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10112

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.