Education Commons^™

Promise Scholarship Programs And Local Prosperity, Michelle Miller-Adams, Edward Smith

Upjohn Institute Policy Papers

We argue that place-based college scholarships, if designed intentionally and leveraged effectively, can foster local economic development. Since the introduction of the Kalamazoo Promise in 2005, a growing number of communities have applied the place-based approach to investments in human capital through the creation of college scholarship programs. Reviewing the existing literature on educational and economic outcomes associated with Promise programs reveals that they can expand students’ postsecondary aspirations, improve a school district’s college-going culture, and increase college enrollment and degree attainment while promoting in-migration of residents and positive growth in housing prices. Therefore, these programs can serve a broader …

Graduate And Professional School Debt: How Much Students Borrow, Sandy Baum, Patricia Steele

Commissioned Research

There is wide variation in how students cover tuition and living expenses while they pursue graduate and professional degrees. Most research doctoral degree students attending public and private nonprofit schools benefit from generous institutional fellowships and assistant ships that cover a significant portion of their expenses. But master’s degree students in all sectors cover most of their expenses with earnings from employment and federal student loans. Borrowing is particularly important for professional degree students, most of whom have neither earnings from employment during the academic year nor grants and fellowships to cover tuition and living expenses while they are enrolled. …

Financing Graduate And Professional Education: How Students Pay, Sandy Baum, Patricia Steele

Commissioned Research

This brief examines how students finance their graduate and professional education. It summarizes the sources of funds used to cover the tuition and fees universities charge, as well as living expenses. Institutions set a “cost of attendance” (COA) for students, estimating the average budget for one academic year (fall through spring). COA includes tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation, and other living expenses, and it establishes the maximum amount students can borrow in federal student loans to attend a particular school. These official budgets serve as the foundation for the discussion that follows about how graduate …

Income-Driven Repayment And The Public Financing Of Higher Education, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis in the legal literature of the federal government’s new income-driven student loan repayment programs, known as Income-Based Repayment and Pay As You Earn. In a set of gradual and little-noticed statutory and regulatory moves, the federal government, through these programs, has dramatically reshaped higher education finance in ways that schools, students, and even the government itself are only beginning to understand.

Under IBR and PAYE, a student borrower pays no more than 10% of her discretionary income in loan service payments, and after a maximum of 20 years, the remaining debt is forgiven—for …

First Year Versus Second Year Retention Of College Students: A Case Study, Heather M. O'Neill

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Students and their families expend much time, effort and money researching which colleges or universities will best suit the students' needs. Simultaneously, institutions desire to find the cohort of students who will succeed at their schools. Recently, faced with more stringent economic constraints, schools are not only seeking students likely to succeed, but are more aware of the financial burden placed on schools if attrition is high. Since the cost of recruiting a class has risen over the years, the cost of losing students has increased. As a result, institutions are more interested in engaging in student retention studies to …