From Subsidies to Loans: The Effects of a National Student Finance Reform on the Choices of Secondary School Students

Alexandra de Gendre and Jan Kabátek

No 14686, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We analyse the effects of a national student finance reform in the Netherlands, which replaced universal subsidies for higher education students by low-interest loans. We show that this reform had a large impact on education choices of secondary school students, lowering their enrolments in college-preparing tracks and increasing the share of students specializing in STEM subjects. The reform also affected the living arrangements of new college entrants. Our findings highlight that secondary school students respond to the modes of higher education financing well ahead of their graduation, and that financial aid uncertainty alone can deter many from pursuing higher education.

Keywords: financial aid; student finance; higher education; Netherlands; policy uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I23 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 74 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban and nep-isf
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp14686.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: From subsidies to loans: The effects of a national student finance reform on the choices of secondary school students (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp14686

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().