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Upjohn Institute Working Papers

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The Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On College Enrollment, Persistence, And Completion, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Marta Lachowska Dec 2017

The Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On College Enrollment, Persistence, And Completion, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein, Marta Lachowska

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the effects on postsecondary education outcomes of the Kalamazoo Promise, a generous, place-based college scholarship. We identify Promise effects using difference-in-differences, comparing eligible to ineligible graduates before and after the Promise’s initiation. According to our estimates, the Promise significantly increases college enrollment, college credits attempted, and credential attainment. Stronger effects occur for women.


Income-Tested College Financial Aid And Labor Disincentives, Rajeev Darolia Dec 2015

Income-Tested College Financial Aid And Labor Disincentives, Rajeev Darolia

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Working has become commonplace among college students; however, this activity can have unexpected financial consequences. Federal formulas implicitly tax the amount of financial aid students are eligible to receive by as much as 50 cents for each marginal dollar of income. This tax creates an incentive for college students to reduce income, though abstruse formulas and the timing of financial aid receipt are likely to limit responses. Using data from a national sample of financially independent college students in the United States, I do not find that students bunch below earnings protection thresholds in a manner that would indicate attempts …


The Distribution Of College Graduate Debt, 1990 To 2008: A Decomposition Approach, Brad J. Hershbein, Kevin M. Hollenbeck Nov 2013

The Distribution Of College Graduate Debt, 1990 To 2008: A Decomposition Approach, Brad J. Hershbein, Kevin M. Hollenbeck

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Despite tremendous recent interest in the subject of student debt by both researchers and policy makers, little is known about how the distribution of college graduate debt has been evolving and what factors can explain it. We use National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data from 1990 through 2008 to document the evolution of college graduate debt profiles. We find that growth in debt over the 1990s was rapid and occurred throughout the distribution; during the 2000s, in contrast, debt grew appreciably only for the top quartile. Employing several decomposition techniques, we exploit the richness of the data to explain these …


A Second Look At Enrollment Changes After The Kalamazoo Promise, Brad J. Hershbein Jun 2013

A Second Look At Enrollment Changes After The Kalamazoo Promise, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

While previous research has documented how the Kalamazoo Promise, the most prominent and generous place-based college scholarship program, increased enrollment in Kalamazoo Public Schools, this paper qualifies and quantifies the characteristics of students who were induced to enter—or stay—in the district. In particular, it analyzes the origins and destinations, socioeconomic composition, and school-level sorting behavior associated with student flows around the time of the Promise announcement. These dimensions are more subtle than changes in the volume of students or measures of their individual success, but they are equally important to understand for communities exploring the feasibility of place-based scholarships as …


The Short-Term Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On Student Outcomes, Timothy J. Bartik, Marta Lachowska Aug 2012

The Short-Term Effects Of The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship On Student Outcomes, Timothy J. Bartik, Marta Lachowska

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In order to study whether college scholarships can be an effective tool in raising students’ performance in secondary school, we use one aspect of the Kalamazoo Promise that resembles a quasi-experiment. The surprise announcement of the scholarship created a large change in expected college tuition costs that varied across different groups of students based on past enrollment decisions. This variation is arguably exogenous to unobserved student characteristics. We estimate the effects of this change by a set of “difference-in-differences” regressions where we compare the change in student outcomes in secondary school across time for different student “length of enrollment” groups. …