The Role of Merit-Based and Need-Based Financial Aid: Evidence from Trieste University's Grant Programs

Grazia Graziosi

Rivista italiana degli economisti, 2014, issue 1, 103-126

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the Italian University grants are an effective tool to prevent student drop-out and to favor the degree attainment, both for merit and need-based financial aids. The survey units are Italian students enrolled on a degree course in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics from 2002/03 until 2007/08 in the University of Trieste. On the one hand, the Regional Agency for the Right to Education offers some grants every year to eligible students from low-income families (rarely related to merit). On the other hand, Fonda Foundation offers some (only) merit-based grants to the best students enrolled in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics degree courses. In order to estimate the causal effect of receiving a grant, we follow the counterfactual analysis and we match treated and control units using Genetic matching and Coarsened Exact Matching. The results suggest that the income-based financial aids have a positive impact to prevent drop-out at 2nd year, but a non significant effect on graduation time, whereas the merit-based scholarships increase the probability to achieve the degree within the set time frame.

Keywords: Financial Higher Education; Evaluation of University Grants; Counterfactual Analysis. JEL classification: I22; H52; C21. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1427/76116 (application/pdf)
https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1427/76116 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
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:mul:jqat1f:doi:10.1427/76116:y:2014:i:1:p:103-126

Access Statistics for this article

Rivista italiana degli economisti is currently edited by Giuliano Conti

More articles in Rivista italiana degli economisti from Società editrice il Mulino
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().