The Power of Certainty: Experimental Evidence on the Effective Design of Free Tuition Programs

Elizabeth Burland, Susan Dynarski, Katherine Michelmore, Stephanie Owen and Shwetha Raghuraman

No 29864, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Proposed “free college” policies vary widely in design. The simplest set tuition to zero for everyone. More targeted approaches limit free tuition to those who demonstrate need through an application process. We experimentally test the effects of these two models on the schooling decisions of low-income students. An unconditional free tuition offer from a large public university substantially increases application and enrollment rates. A free tuition offer contingent on proof of need has a much smaller effect on application and none on enrollment. These results are consistent with students placing a high value on financial certainty when making schooling decisions.

JEL-codes: I0 I21 I22 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ure
Note: ED LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Published as Elizabeth Burland & Susan Dynarski & Katherine Michelmore & Stephanie Owen & Shwetha Raghuraman, 2023. "The Power of Certainty: Experimental Evidence on the Effective Design of Free Tuition Programs," American Economic Review: Insights, vol 5(3), pages 293-310.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29864.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Power of Certainty: Experimental Evidence on the Effective Design of Free Tuition Programs (2023)
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:nbr:nberwo:29864

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29864

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().