Browsing by Author "Howell, Jessica"

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    Policies and payoffs to addressing America’s college graduation deficit
    Avery, Christopher; Howell, Jessica; Pender, Matea; Sacerdote, Bruce (The Brookings Institute, 2019-09-01)
    The authors consider four distinct policy levers available to states for raising bachelor’s degree completion rates in the U.S. through their public colleges and universities. They simulate these policies using elasticities from the existing literature and a matched College Board-National Student Clearinghouse dataset on enrollment and degree completion. Increasing spending at public college and targeted elimination of tuition and fees at four-year public colleges with an income cutoff are projected to be the most effective of these policies in terms of cost per additional BA degree. Reducing tuition and fees at public colleges and a distinct policy of moving students to the best available in-state public college (BISPO) are next best on a cost-benefit basis. Free community college policies are significantly less cost effective. While reducing community college tuition and fees to zero does lead to more Associates degrees, some students are drawn away from the four-year sector in the process. Low-income students see the smallest gains from free community college policies since these students already face very low net prices of attendance.
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    Realizing Your College Potential? Impacts of College Board’s RYCP Campaign on Postsecondary Enrollment
    Gurantz, Oded; Howell, Jessica; Hurwitz, Michael; Larson, Cassandra; Pender, Matea; White, Brooke (Annenberg Institute at Brown University, 2020-05-01)
    The College Board sought to reduce barriers in the college application process by minimizing information aggregation costs, encouraging a broad application portfolio, and providing an impetus to start the search process. Some students were offered additional encouragements, such as text message reminders or college application fee waivers. In a randomized control trial with 785,000 low- and middle-income students in the top 50% of the PSAT and SAT distributions, the authors find no changes in college enrollment patterns, with the exception of a 0.02σ increase in college quality measures for African-American and Hispanic students.