Short-Term Credit Constraints?

A new NBER paper suggests that we shouldn't dismiss the role of short-term credit constraints in higher education participation.

The Nature of Credit Constraints and Human Capital
by Lance J. Lochner, Alexander Monge-Naranjo - NBER WP #13912

Abridged Abstract:

"We show that the rising empirical importance of familial wealth and income in determining college attendance (Belley and Lochner 2007) is consistent with increasingly binding credit constraints in the face of rising tuition costs and returns to schooling. Our framework also explains the recent increase in private credit for college as a market response to the rising returns to school".

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W13912