Book Description

More students are enrolling in college than ever before, and the returns to a college degree are significant, including higher wages, lower unemployment rates, better health outcomes and inter-generational improvements. In 2012, college graduates on average earned $17,500 more annually than a high school graduate (Taylor, Parker, Morin, Fry, Patten & Brown, 2014). Broad access institutions, which include community colleges and nonselective four-year institutions, represent the majority of college students and institutions. But the number of students completing college degrees has not risen as quickly as college enrollment, especially for certain groups. Low-income and minority students are less likely to complete degrees, even after controlling for student characteristics (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011). My dissertation is comprised of three papers examining financial aid at California community colleges. California has a long history of public support for higher education. California’s 1965 Master Plan defined public higher education segments with the commitment for providing public higher education for all willing and able students, including the University of California (UC)—reserved for the State’s top one-eighth of high school graduates, California State University (CSU)—reserved for the State’s top one-third of high school graduates, and the California Community College (CCC) systems—reserved for anyone “capable of benefiting from instruction”. Each of my three papers uses administrative data on the census of all community college students in California collected by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. California’s community college system is the largest in the nation with 113 institutions serving over 2.1 million students each year. Nationwide, over 10 million students enrolled in a community college in 2012, representing 37 percent of all college students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). But in California, the share of students enrolling in community college is much higher; 60 percent of all California college students were enrolled in a community college in 2012 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). The first paper of this dissertation provides a descriptive landscape of financial aid at California community colleges, including trends in financial aid receipt, differences in student characteristics of aid recipients and combinations of financial aid programs. Historically, the California Community College system had the lowest two-year fees in the nation, but fees have more than doubled since 2002 (Ma, Baum, Pender & Bell, 2015). Results from this descriptive work reveal a complex picture of financial aid receipt among California community college students. The second paper closely examines the effect of requiring the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at one community college campus on a variety of outcomes. In 2002, Barstow Community College began requiring the FAFSA for all students applying for the state fee waiver program. To estimate the effect of this policy change on Pell Grant receipt, I use a difference-in-differences approach comparing Barstow to a similar nearby college before and after the policy change. Results show that the policy change had negative effects on FAFSA submission, fee waiver receipt and Pell-eligibility for all students in the first year after the policy change. But analysis for two years after the program was enacted indicates that the negative effects might be short-term, and could possibly rebound after the policy is in place for longer. These results provide valuable insight into the effects of FAFSA’s complexity and institutional policies on financial aid receipt. Finally, the third paper of this dissertation examines the effects of the Year-round Pell Grant program. Pell recipients are typically only eligible for one award per year. However, in 2008, Congress authorized the Year-round Pell Grant, which allowed students to receive a second Pell Grant in the same fiscal year. This paper uses a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the effect of the Year-round Pell Grant on California community college summer enrollment. Overall, results from this paper show that the Year-round Pell Grant had a positive significant effect on short-term summer enrollment, with larger effects for the lowest-income Pell Grant recipients and students with higher enrollment intensity. There is interest in reinstating the program, but there is very limited research on the effects of the initial program. This paper provides evidence of how the Year-round Pell Grant increased community college summer enrollment. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the limited research on take-up and effects of financial aid at the two-year level. Given the large numbers of students who begin their postsecondary schooling at community colleges, many of them low-income, it is useful to investigate the effects of financial aid at these broad access institutions. California is an ideal setting for this study because over 20 percent of the nation’s community college students are in California, and its 113 campuses represent an enormous amount of institutional diversity.