Sunday, October 04, 2009

College Costs and College Take Up

New NBER Working Paper by Deming and Dynarski

Fascinating discussion of the interplay between the benefits of targetting programmes and the costs of doing so in terms of administration burden and so on. Also presents some evidence that the type of simplification interventions being actively discussed in the behavioural economics literature may have effects on college enrollment.

NBER Working Paper No. 15387
Issued in September 2009
NBER Program(s): CH ED LS PE
We review the experimental and quasi-experimental research evidence on the causal relationship between college costs and educational attainment, with a particular focus on low-income populations. The weight of the evidence indicates that reducing college costs can increase college entry and persistence. Simple and transparent programs appear to be most effective. Programs that link money to incentives and/or the takeup of academic support services appear to be particularly effective.

This paper is available as PDF (160 K) or via email.

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

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