How does financial aid affect the lives of low-income college students? The United States spends nearly $100 billion in financial aid each year to help more students attain a college degree. Yet, low-income students continue to complete college at relatively low rates. This William T. Grant Scholar is using her award to study the impact of financial aid on the living conditions and relationships of low-income college students. She is also examining how living conditions and relationships affect students’ daily decisions, emotional experiences, and sleep patterns; and estimating how those effects relate to college completion. This is a student-level randomized trial in which a scholarship is randomly assigned to 3,600 college students (1,600 in the experimental condition and 2,000 in the control group). The investigator will try to determine whether students are simply unresponsive to financial incentives, or whether other factors diminish the effectiveness of financial aid.
How does financial aid affect the lives of low-income college students?
