 Free college? Assessing enrollment responses to the Tennessee Promise programHieu Nguyen Labour Economics, 2020, vol. 66, issue C Abstract: In this paper, we study a novel, broad-based tuition assistance program within the two-year college sector and contribute new results to both the expansive higher education funding literature and the modest yet fast-growing college promise literature. Starting with the class of 2015, the state of Tennessee has been covering full tuition and fees for any high school graduate who wishes to attend a state-funded two-year college under its unique Tennessee Promise initiative. Exploiting the timing of this policy shock, we employ quasi-experimental methods to document that Tennessee Promise increased full-time first-time undergraduate enrollment at the state's community colleges by at least 40%. We also find a positive response in attendance among black and Hispanic students. An auxiliary analysis shows a short-run reduction of about 2% in enrollment at the state's public four-year institutions, suggesting some degree of substitutability between the unsubsidized and subsidized college sectors. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of future statewide free-college programs. Keywords: Tennessee Promise; Free college; Financial aid; New York Excelsior; Free tuition; Higher education funding (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:66:y:2020:i:c:s0927537120300865 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101882 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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