Experimental Evidence on the Effects (or Lack Thereof) of Informational Framing During the College Transition

Technology-facilitated interventions following high school graduation have shown promise for increasing the likelihood of college matriculation, but we know little about how to fine-tune these tools. I conducted an experiment in which college-intending Tennessee high school graduates received informational messages in distinct behavioral frames: business-as-usual, in which they received the same messages as the prior cohort; loss aversion, which emphasized what students would lose if they did not act; reduction of ambiguity, which provided details on necessary actions and anticipated completion times; and peer support, which encouraged students to work with friends on enrollment tasks. There was no main effect of the treatment frames. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that, at certain eligibility checkpoints, a loss aversion frame may negatively affect men and the peer support frame may negatively affect first-generation and Black participants. I situate the findings in the literature and recommend future directions for research on informational intervention delivery.

Customized Nudging to Improve FAFSA Completion and Income Verification

Informational and behavioral barriers hinder social benefit take-up. We investigate the impact of mitigating these barriers through providing personalized information on benefits application status and application assistance on filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the gateway to college financial aid. Through a multidistrict experiment, we assess the impact of this outreach, delivered via text message. This data-driven strategy improves FAFSA completion and college matriculation and potentially reduces the negative consequences of additional procedural hurdles such as FAFSA income verification, required of approximately one third of filers nationally.

Online Learning Perspectives of Native American Students

With Native American college matriculation on the rise and with online learning increasing in popularity, a need exists to bridge the two and to develop online learning practices that are culturally responsive. Kirkness and Barnhardt identify four principles central to American Indian education: respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility. These four principles were used as the framework of this ethnographic, qualitative study, which included two Native American female students enrolled in an online course at a large 4-year University in the southeast. Results showed that students wanted supportive learning environments, Indigenous curriculum and perspectives represented online classrooms, interaction with professors and peers, and opportunities for project-based learning.

No Excuses Charter Schools and College Enrollment: New Evidence from a High School Network in Chicago

Although it is well known that certain charter schools dramatically increase students' standardized test scores, there is considerably less evidence that these human capital gains persist into adulthood. To address this matter, we match three years of lottery data from a high-performing charter high school to administrative college enrollment records and estimate the effect of winning an admissions lottery on college matriculation, quality, and persistence. Seven to nine years after the lottery, we find that lottery winners are 10.0 percentage points more likely to attend college and 9.5 percentage points more likely to enroll for at least four semesters. Unlike previous studies, our estimates are powerful enough to uncover improvements on the extensive margin of college attendance (enrolling in any college), the intensive margin (persistence of attendance), and the quality margin (enrollment at selective, four-year institutions). We conclude by providing nonexperimental evidence that more recent cohorts at other campuses in the network increased enrollment at a similar rate.

Heterogeneous Impacts of Concentrated Poverty During Adolescence on College Outcomes

This research analyzes how living in concentrated poverty during adolescence affects future college outcomes. Using Add Health data and propensity score methods to explore effect heterogeneity, I find that concentrated poverty has little direct impact on college matriculation. It does, however, strongly reduce the odds of graduating from college for adolescents least likely to reside in concentrated poverty. This indicates an advantage-leveling model in which individuals with prior advantages have the most to lose from neighborhood disadvantage during adolescence. I assess neighborhood socialization, school effects, and peer effects as potential explanations for the neighborhood effect. Supporting collective socialization theory, neighborhood economic opportunity and resource deprivation are key aspects of poverty-saturated neighborhoods that influence college graduation odds. Schools also play an important role in the relationship between neighborhoods and college outcomes. Main effects are likely to be causal as they are highly robust to unobserved confounding.

Parental and Familial Factors Among Latino/a Youths’ Successful Matriculation into Postsecondary Education

Extant research focuses on the “educational attainment gap,” documenting the lack of parity among Latino youth and other high school graduates in college matriculation. This study reversed that question, and asked instead, what factors, and specifically what parental or family-related factors, contribute to Latino/a youth enrolling in four-year post-secondary institutions where future earnings tend to be higher than two-year colleges. Data from the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project (THEOP, 2004) were analyzed to identify parental contributors to successful matriculation into post-secondary education. Findings indicate that parents attending college was one of the most important indicators of Latino/a enrollment in either a two- or four-year college or university. Also significant, and potentially critical in social welfare policy, was rewarding students for grades. Parents helping with and checking homework were not helpful in youths’ progression to postsecondary education.