How have changes in the price of enrolling full time at public 2- and 4-year colleges affected student decisions about whether and where to enroll in college? Using local differences in the growth of tuition at community colleges and public 4-year colleges, we study the impact of public higher education tuition prices on the post-secondary…

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, going to college has become increasingly financially difficult in the United States. Tuition prices continued to rise, state funding for higher education declined, and the mean family income declined or stagnated for all but the top 20 percent of families (Goldrick-Rab 2016). In a period where college…

While the majority of college students use credit cards for educational expenses like textbooks, recent data reports that college students also use credit cards to directly fund their schooling by charging for at least some part of their tuition (Sallie Mae, 2009). Because credit cards carry a higher interest rate than student loans, and because…

There has been widespread concern about widening disparities in parental investments that may be associated with widening gaps in educational attainment. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study examines parents' investments and engagement in the college-going…