Money for nothing: Estimating the impact of student aid on participation in higher educationLorraine Dearden (), Emla Fitzsimons and Gill Wyness Economics of Education Review, 2014, vol. 43, issue C, 66-78 Abstract: Understanding how higher education (HE) finance policy can affect HE decisions is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation. Yet there is a severe lack of evidence on the effectiveness of student aid in encouraging HE participation outside of the US, and none at all for the UK. This paper exploits a reform that took place in the UK in 2004, when maintenance grants were introduced for students from low income families, having been abolished since 1999. This reform occurred in isolation of any other policy changes, and did not affect students from relatively better off families, making them a potential control group. We use a difference-in-difference framework to estimate the effect of the reform on HE undergraduate participation. We find a positive impact of maintenance grants, with a £1000 increase in grants leading to a 3.95 percentage point increase in participation. Keywords: Higher education participation; Higher education funding policies; Maintenance grants; Difference in differences (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:43:y:2014:i:c:p:66-78 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.09.005 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.