Do opportunities for low-income students at top colleges promote academic success? Evidence from Colombia's Ser Pilo Paga program

Jeffrey Penney, Steven Lehrer, Gloria Bernal and Luis Carlos Reyes

No 64, CLEF Working Paper Series from Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo

Abstract: In 2014, the government of Colombia launched a unique meanstested and merit-based scholarship program called Ser Pilo Paga. We examine the effects of this scholarship on student performance on the country's university exit exam and other educational outcomes. Exploiting thresholds for socioeconomic status and test score performance on the high school exit exam for Ser Pilo Paga eligibility using a multi-score fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that the scholarship's effects on test scores to be quite limited in most cases. However, recipients of the scholarship do exhibit significant differences in enrollment, persistence, and test taking behaviour compared to non-recipients.

Keywords: Colombia; Saber Pro; scholarships; Ser Pilo Paga; test scores (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:clefwp:279563

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