The role of merit-based and need-based financial aid: Evidence from Trieste University's grant programs

Grazia Graziosi

No 11, Working Papers DEAMS from DEAMS - Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali, Matematiche e Statistiche "Bruno de Finetti"

Abstract: The aim of this article 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 nonsignificant effect on graduation time, whereas the merit-based scholarships increase the probability to achieve the degree in the time alloted.

Keywords: Financial higher education; Evaluation of university grants; Conterfactual analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10077/8517 (application/pdf)

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:tre:wpaper:11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers DEAMS from DEAMS - Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali, Matematiche e Statistiche "Bruno de Finetti" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gianni Perini ().