The Effect of Merit Aid on Enrollment: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Iowa’s National Scholars Award

Leeds, Daniel M.; DesJardins, Stephen L.

doi:10.1007/s11162-014-9359-2

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…A growing number of public universities have developed institutional aid programs that specifically target nonresident students (e.g., Burd, 2015b; DesJardins, 2001; Leeds & DesJardins, 2015). These policies are motivated by the goal of increasing net tuition revenue, as nonresident tuition price is typically more than twice that of resident tuition price, and/or the goal of increasing academic profile, as nonresident students often score higher than residents on college entrance exams (Jaquette, Curs, & Posselt, 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowded Out? The Effect of Nonresident Enrollment on Resident Access to Public Research Universities

Curs

Jaquette

2017

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

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Public universities have pursued nonresident enrollment growth as a solution to the stagnation of state funding. Representatives of public universities often argue that nonresident tuition revenue is an important resource in efforts to finance access for resident students, whereas state policymakers are concerned that nonresident enrollment reduces opportunities for residents. This study investigated whether nonresident enrollment growth crowded out resident enrollment at public research universities using an instrumental variable identification strategy. For the sample of all public research universities, increased nonresident enrollment did not affect resident enrollment. For prestigious public research universities, nonresident enrollment growth had a negative effect on resident enrollment. The findings suggest that nonresident enrollment growth does not benefit resident access, as suggested by university administrators, nor does it harm resident access, as suggested by state policymakers. However, state policymakers may be concerned that nonresident enrollment crowds out resident access at prestigious public universities.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowded Out? The Effect of Nonresident Enrollment on Resident Access to Public Research Universities

Curs

Jaquette

2017

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

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“…Although, given that a window of bandwidth around the cut-point a fuzzy RD model could be estimated straightforwardly, it was challenging to choose this bandwidth. The tradeoff between bias and precision was a major motivator of bandwidth selection—larger bandwidths reduced the noisiness of estimates at the expense of introducing bias from data points far from the cutoff for treatment [ 43 ]. To test the robustness of our RD estimation results, besides the sample of the elderly that was aged within 10 years around the 60 cutoff, we also duplicated the estimation procedures by applying samples of elderly aged 52–68 and 48–72.…”

Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Food Poverty and Vulnerability among the Rural Elderly with Chronic Diseases: The Role of the New Rural Pension Scheme in China

Zhang

Luo

Robinson

2018

IJERPH

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Vulnerability to food poverty is the probability of an individual falling below the food poverty line in the near future, which provides a forward-looking welfare analysis. Applying a nationally representative survey dataset, this study investigates the role of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in reducing food poverty and vulnerability among the rural elderly with chronic diseases. By designing province-specific food poverty lines to account for variations in the elderly’s needs, as well as the prices across provinces using a least-cost linear programming approach, the food poverty incidences among the elderly with chronic diseases are calculated. Applying a three-stage feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) procedure, the vulnerability to food poverty is estimated. Our results show that food poverty incidence and vulnerability of the elderly with chronic diseases in rural China is 41.9% and 35% respectively, which is 8% and 6% higher, respectively, than the elderly that are in good health. To address the potential endogeneity of pension payment, a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) regression is employed to investigate the effects of pension income on food poverty and vulnerability for different population groups. We found that pension income decreases the probability of being food poor and the vulnerability to food poverty among the elderly with chronic diseases by 12.9% and 16.8% respectively, while it has no significant effect on the elderly in good health.

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“…According to the patterns in the SAT, it is possible to infer that the same situation happens in the ACT sample. Leeds and DesJardins (2015) found their running variable in the Iowa dataset passed the McCrary test, but their running variable was an index associated with the ACT instead of the ACT along. Though the manipulation of the ACT may exist, the other parts in the index, including high school GPA, may reduce the impact from retaking the ACT, making the index less manipulatable.…”

Section: Retaking and Test Score Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…To identify the existence of manipulation, the McCrary density test (McCrary, 2008) (including the visual examination of the histogram of the running variable) has been widely suggested and adopted in most articles (Bruce & Carruthers, 2014;Harrington et al, 2016;Leeds & DesJardins, 2015;Scott-Clayton, 2011;Scott-Clayton & Zafar, 2019;Welch, 2014;Zhang et al, 2016). Only studies in Tennessee (Bruce & Carruthers, 2014;Welch, 2014) reported the statistics of the McCrary test.…”

Section: Retaking and Test Score Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without the unmanipulated first ACT score, researchers have tried to discuss how severe the selection bias is or whether the bias can be significantly controlled. Leeds and DesJardins (2015) argued that though their running variables were indexes that partially included the ACT scores, they believed that retaking the ACT would not largely affect their indexes. The McCrary test also supported that their running variables were too hard to be manipulated through retaking the test.…”

Section: "Donut-hole" Specificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Essays on state merit-based financial aid : seeking STEM, revisiting methodology, and test retakers

Jin¹

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This dissertation investigates several topics in state merit-based financial aid research. The main research content includes three separate studies, primarily using the administrative datasets from the Missouri Department of Higher Education. The first study is an empirical paper that examines the effects of the Missouri Bright Flight Scholarship (a merit-based financial aid) on producing STEM graduates in Missouri 4-year public institutions. The fuzzy regression discontinuity estimates indicate that this merit aid program has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on STEM/engineering initial major choice and degree completion. Particularly, the aid still has a negative impact on male students but may encourage female students to enter a STEM field. The second study is a technical note that addresses three ignored issues about regression discontinuity application in merit-based financial aid research: retaking and test score manipulation, rounding errors in the running variable, and misleading statistical inference. I re-examine the practices in recent related studies and provide recommendations for future financial aid research, particularly about dealing with test scores appropriately in regression discontinuity designs. The third study is a policy brief about the consequence of allowing test retaking in merit aid programs. Using the Missouri administrative data, I primarily compare the percentages of aid eligible students based on both the first-time and the highest ACT composite scores in different demographic groups. The empirical results indicate that underrepresented students are less likely to retake the ACT compared to their peers and the acceptance of the highest score brings more inequitable impacts on underrepresented students. The discussion may help policymakers to better understand the retaking behaviors so that they can make related policies to benefit underrepresented students with more effectiveness.

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The Effect of Merit Aid on Enrollment: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Iowa’s National Scholars Award

Cited by 22 publications

References 20 publications

Crowded Out? The Effect of Nonresident Enrollment on Resident Access to Public Research Universities

Crowded Out? The Effect of Nonresident Enrollment on Resident Access to Public Research Universities

Reducing Food Poverty and Vulnerability among the Rural Elderly with Chronic Diseases: The Role of the New Rural Pension Scheme in China

Essays on state merit-based financial aid : seeking STEM, revisiting methodology, and test retakers

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