The intention of the program is that conditioning additional financial aid on certain behaviors will lead students to increase their effort towards their studies, which in turn will lead them to perform better in their classes in the short-term and progress through their degree requirements at a quicker rate in the medium-term. The program is…

Performance-based scholarships have two main goals: (1) to give students more money for college; and (2) to provide incentives for academic progress. MDRC launched the Performance-Based Scholarship (PBS) Demonstration in 2008 to evaluate the effectiveness of these scholarships in a diverse set of states, institutions, and low-income student…

While postsecondary completion rates are a concern among many student populations across the country, college graduation rates for Latino students, especially Latino male students, are even lower than the national average. Low-income Latino men face many barriers to postsecondary success, including both financial and personal obstacles. This…

One of the original purposes of student financial aid was to ensure fairer access to post-secondary education to those least able to afford it and to those traditionally underrepresented. Various federal and state programs were put in place to achieve this goal, including the federal Pell Grant and state aid programs. Yet policymakers and…

The expense of attending college is one factor that may explain why low-income students often drop out of school. In California, despite generous state aid and relatively low fees at community colleges, many low-income students still have substantial college-related costs that they cannot cover. To compound matters, federal support for students…

This report presents early results from a rigorous evaluation of a performance-based scholarship program that was implemented at three community colleges in Ohio during the 2008-2009 academic year. The program in Ohio that is the subject of this report is part of MDRC's national Performance-Based Scholarship (PBS) Demonstration, which was launched…

While studies have examined the relationship between financial aid and college access, few have evaluated the relationship between financial aid and academic success. Factors that are associated with financial need, such as being low income, are also associated with a lack of academic success, making it difficult to isolate the effect of…