Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Anderson, Drew M
• Zaber, Melanie A

Titel

Would Low-Income Students Graduate Faster with a Boost in Financial Aid? Results from a Natural Experiment in New Jersey. Research Brief. RB-A101-1

Ist Teil von

• RAND Corporation, 2021

Ort / Verlag

RAND Corporation

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

ERIC

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Almost every state offers some kind of college tuition assistance for students from low-income families who attend in-state colleges and universities. This aid is important: It can make all the difference as to whether students finish a degree program that can help pave their way to a well-paying job and meaningful career. In New Jersey, residents attending in-state colleges and universities can receive grants from the Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) program. Grants range from $1,000 to more than $12,000 per year that students can apply toward college costs and do not need to pay back. Students qualify based on a complicated formula that considers their family's income and assets, adjusting for age and the type of college they attend. While other state and federal aid programs have lost ground to tuition growth, TAG has maintained its status as the most generous program in the nation per undergraduate student. Focusing on eligibility thresholds is not a new idea, but RAND researchers combined hundreds of different thresholds to evaluate how aid effectiveness varied by family financial resources. The research team considered how TAG works differently across the state's many different higher education institutions: community colleges, public universities, and private nonprofit colleges. This brief summarizes some key findings, with details in the full report "Cutting the College Price TAG: The Effects of New Jersey's Tuition Aid Grant on College Persistence and Completion. Research Report. RR-A101-1" (ED612167).