Tuition, Targeting, and Tradeoffs: A Conjoint Analysis of Americans’ Preferences over the Design of Higher Education Subsidies

Over the past three decades, political candidates and elected policymakers have advanced a wide variety of publicly funded tuition-subsidy programs to improve college access and -affordability. These college-aid programs employ different subsidy instruments, target different types of students, draw from different funding sources, and come with different strings attached. This study assesses Americans’ preferences over the multidimensional design of such higher education subsidies using a conjoint survey experiment with randomized policy proposals that vary in their subsidy instruments, target populations, eligibility requirements, and funding arrangements. The results suggest that fiscal tradeoffs loom large in Americans’ support for higher education programs, but elements of subsidy design matter as well: respondents (particularly Republicans) prefer aid packaged as tax credits; strongly means-tested programs receive greater support than broader, income-based aid (an effect driven by Democrats); and subsidies targeted to community college students enjoy substantial, bipartisan support. The study’s results shed light on differences in extant tuition-subsidy programs’ popular support and provide empirical grounding for debates over the prudent design of college aid by estimating tradeoffs that programs confront between efficiently targeting marginal students and securing broad popular support.