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Browsing by Author "Castleman, Benjamin L."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Behavioral Insights for Federal Higher Education Policy
    Castleman, Benjamin L. (Urban Institute, 2017-09-01)
    The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos highlighting some of the most critical issues in higher education and recommending policy solutions. This report draws on behavioral science to offer low-cost changes the federal government could make—including simplifying the application for student aid and leveraging existing digital touch points with students—to help ensure academically capable students make it to graduation.
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    College Advising at a National Scale: Experimental Evidence from the CollegePoint initiative
    Sullivan, Zachary; Castleman, Benjamin L.; Bettinger, Eric (Annenberg Institute at Brown University, 2019-09-01)
    In recognition of the complexity of the college and financial aid application process, and in response to insufficient access to family or school-based counseling among economically-disadvantaged populations, investments at the local, state, and federal level have expanded students’ access to college and financial aid advising. In this paper, the authors report early results from an RCT of College Point, an innovative, national college advising initiative that pursues a technology-enabled approach to provide students with sustained, intensive advising.
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    The Effect of Reduced Student Loan Borrowing on Academic Performance and Default: Evidence from a Loan Counseling Experiment
    Barr, Andrew C.; Bird, Kelli A.; Castleman, Benjamin L. (Annenberg Institute at Brown University, 2019-06-01)
    Student loan borrowing for higher education has emerged as a top policy concern. Policy makers at the institutional, state, and federal levels have pursued a variety of strategies to inform students about loan origination processes and how much a student has cumulatively borrowed, and to provide students with greater access to loan counseling. The authors conducted an experiment to evaluate the impact of an outreach campaign that prompted loan applicants at a large community college to make informed and active borrowing decisions and that offered them access to remote, one-to-one assistance from a loan counselor. The results suggest policy-makers and higher education leaders should carefully examine the potential unintended consequences of efforts to reduce student borrowing, particularly in light of growing evidence regarding the counter-intuitive positive relationship between reduced borrowing levels and worse student academic and financial outcomes.
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    Who Should Re-enroll in College? The Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree
    Bird, Kelli A.; Castleman, Benjamin L.; Fischer, Brett; Skinner, Benjamin T. (Annenberg Institute at Brown University, 2020-06-01)
    Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and a sizable share of these job losses may be permanent. Unemployment rates are particularly high among adults without a college degree. Recent state policy efforts have focused on increasing re-enrollment and credentialing among adults with some college but no degree (SCND); these efforts are likely to accelerate given the COVID-19 disruptions to the U.S. economy. Yet little is actually known about the background characteristics, academic experiences, or labor market trajectories of this population. Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), the authors provide the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND population, and how these compare on key measures to VCCS graduates. They also develop a framework for prioritizing which segments of the SCND population states might target for re-enrollment and completion interventions. This framework may be particularly useful to states that need to fill critical workforce shortages in healthcare and other sectors or re-train their workforce in the wake of mass unemployment and economic disruption stemming from the COVID-19 crisis.