It is well established that financial aid, in the form of grants, increases the probability of enrollment in postsecondary education. A slate of studies in recent years has extended this research to examine whether grant aid also has an impact on persistence and degree attainment. This paper presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the…

Do tuition vouchers and cash subsidies promote educational or labor force outcomes for "non-traditional" students? I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impacts of a state aid program with an unobserved eligibility cutoff. Eligibility has no impact on degree completion for students with a preference for community…

Student loans are a crucial aspect of financing a college education for millions of Americans, yet we have surprisingly little empirical evidence concerning individuals' unwillingness to borrow money for educational purposes. This study provides the first large-scale quantitative evidence of levels of loan aversion in the United States. Using…

We examine the impacts of being awarded a Cal Grant, among the most generous state merit aid programs. We exploit variation in eligibility rules using GPA and family income cutoffs that are ex ante unknown to applicants. Cal Grant eligibility increases degree completion by 2 to 5 percentage points in our reduced form estimates. Cal Grant also…