Volume 37, Number 2 (Spring) 2002
Seftor, Neil S., and Sarah E. Turner. 2002. "Back to School: Federal Student Aid Policy and Adult College Enrollment." Journal of Human Resources 37(2):336-352.
Much of the research examining the question of how federal financial aid affects decisions to enroll in college has focused on the behavior of students in the relatively narrow range immediately following high school graduation. leaving unanswered the question of how changes in the availability of aid affect the behavior of older students. This analysis examines! the question of how changes in the means-tested federal Pell grant program affects enrollment decisions of potential students in their twenties and thirties. Our results indicate sizable effects of the introduction of the Pell grant program on college enrollment decisions for older students.
Neil Seftor (
nseftor@mathematica-mpr.com ) is a researcher at Mathematics Policy Research
and Sarah Turner ( sturner@virginia.edu
) is an assistant professor of economics and education at the University of
Virginia. The authors would like to thank Charlie Brown. Susan Dynarski. and two
anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts. The authors would
further like to acknowledge the generous support of the Virginia Project on the
Economics of Higher Education in funding this work. The data used in this
article can be obtained beginning September 2002 through August 2005 from the
Department of Economics, 114 Rouss Hall, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA 22904.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X