Across the United States, colleges and universities must dynamically respond to changes in population demographics and demand in order to meet enrollment goals. As institutions have adapted to a shifting educational landscape, tuition discounting has become a prevalent mechanism utilized within strategic enrollment management. While many students…

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany's universities started charging tuition fees, which were subsequently abolished until 2015. We exploit the unusual lack of grandfathering in these policies to show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among incumbent students. However, fees also decrease…

Due to concerns about college affordability, in 2011, the Department of Education began producing two annual public lists of institutions with the highest change in tuition and fees and average net price within sector (top 5% and at least US$600 increase). This study investigates the effect of this low-stakes federal accountability tool on…

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically identify and employ decentralized cutoffs in SAT/ACT…

Tuition discounting has been a long-standing practice among colleges and universities. Its roots can be traced to the beginnings of the 1970s, and its use has continued to increase and expand in the decades following. However, despite its widespread use, the research is inconclusive whether tuition discounting has been an effective strategy to…

Subtitle VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 (McKinney-Vento Act) authorizes the Secretary of Education to provide grants to states [42 U.S.C. § 11432(a)]. Grants provide services and activities to improve the identification of students who qualify as homeless, as well as to enable the students to enroll in, attend, and…

United States historians have recorded the COVID-19 pandemic as one of the major events of 2020. The Spring 2020 session was an unprecedented time for institutions of higher education. The traditional model of higher education was supplanted by digital online modality for delivery of curriculum, not only in order to finish the Spring 2020…

The college experience involves much more than credit hours and degrees. Students likely derive utility from in-person instruction and on-campus social activities. Quantitative measures of the value of these individual components have been hard to come by. Leveraging the COVID-19 shock, we elicit students' intended likelihood of enrolling in…

Fear of the coronavirus has shut down all but essential businesses. Economists have projected that unemployment could rise as high as 20%, compared with 3.5% this past February 2020. A survey conducted in mid-April by Strada Education Network found 62% of Americans worried about losing their jobs and 34% believed they would need more education to…

The relationship between pricing and learning behavior is an important topic in research on massive open online courses (MOOCs). We report on two case studies where cohorts of learners were offered coupons for free certificates to explore how price reductions might influence behavior in MOOC-based online learning settings. In Case Study 1, we…

Recent efforts to increase college access and completion concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policy makers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-term gains in college completion. In this paper, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes…

Using a dataset that matched applicants to graduate programs at a regional university who were admitted but chose not to attend to a section of students who did choose to attend, this research investigates the factors involved in students selecting a graduate program. The distance to a university was not a factor in the student's decision, even…

The College Board sought to reduce barriers in the college application process by minimizing information aggregation costs, encouraging a broad application portfolio, and providing an impetus to start the search process. Some students were offered additional encouragements, such as text message reminders or college application fee waivers. In a…

Recent headlines have brought attention to the effects that unfavorable demographic and fiscal conditions are having on postsecondary education institutions. Among those most acutely feeling the pressures are likely to be institutions located in rural communities that are seeing more rapid population declines and lagging median income. This…

These tables present data from four administrations of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (2003-04, 2007-08, 2011-12, and 2015-16) showing trends in how graduate students financed their education. Data include the demographic attributes and academic characteristics of graduate students and the average price of attendance for the programs…