Digital Messaging to Improve College Enrollment and Success

Christopher Avery, Ben Castleman (), Michael Hurwitz, Bridget Long () and Lindsay C. Page

No 27897, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate the efficacy of text messaging campaigns to remind students about and support them with key steps in the college search, application, selection and transition process. First, in collaboration with the College Board and uAspire, both national non-profit organizations, we implemented text-message based outreach and advising to students in over 700 US high schools that primarily serve large shares of low-income students. Second, we collaborated with several school districts in the state of Texas to implement a school-based version of the intervention. In the national sample, treatment students received outreach approximately once per month from uAspire counselors, whereas in the Texas sample, treatment students received outreach once every one to two weeks from their high school counselors. In both samples, outreach began in Spring 2015 and continued through September 2016. We tested these interventions with concurrent cluster randomized control trials with randomization at the school level. In contrast to the national version of the intervention, which tended to produce null effects, the school-based intervention yielded positive and significant impacts on several college-going steps and on college enrollment for certain subgroups. We discuss key differences between the two versions of the intervention that may have contributed to these divergent results.

JEL-codes: I21 I22 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
Note: ED
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published as Avery, Christopher & Castleman, Benjamin L. & Hurwitz, Michael & Long, Bridget Terry & Page, Lindsay C., 2021. "Digital messaging to improve college enrollment and success," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
Published as Christopher Avery & Benjamin L. Castleman & Michael Hurwitz & Bridget Terry Long & Lindsay C. Page, 2021. "Digital messaging to improve college enrollment and success," Economics of Education Review, vol 84.

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