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What Does Free Community College Buy? Early Impacts from the Oregon Promise
Author(s) -
Gurantz Oded
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.1002/pam.22157
Subject(s) - community college , attendance , postsecondary education , significant difference , state (computer science) , demographic economics , demography , difference in differences , political science , psychology , medical education , medicine , higher education , economic growth , economics , sociology , computer science , econometrics , algorithm
This paper examines the Oregon Promise, a state‐level program that exclusively subsidizes in‐state community college attendance. I estimate impacts using a difference‐in‐difference design that links students in states with essentially universal 10th‐grade PSAT coverage to national‐level postsecondary enrollment data. I find that the implementation of the Oregon Promise increased enrollment at two‐year colleges by roughly four to five percentage points for the first two eligible cohorts. In the first year of the program, the increase in community college enrollment comes primarily from students shifting out of four‐year colleges, whereas in the second year the program predominately increases overall postsecondary enrollment.