Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Financial Aid Nudges: Evidence from Field and Quasi-Experiments

(Education)

To successfully enroll in college, students must complete a variety of forms and applications and meet specific deadlines for each. Failure to complete any of these steps on time may limit a student’s college options. Recent research and policy attention has drawn on insights from the behavioral sciences to simplify the college-going process and provide more information to students as they evaluate college options (e.g., Bettinger et al., 2012; Castleman & Page, in press, 2015; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006; Hoxby & Turner, 2013). Much of the focus has been on helping students apply for federal student aid. This work, for example, demonstrates that coupling FAFSA completion assistance with income tax preparation (Bettinger et al., 2012) and sending text messages reminding college students to re-file the FAFSA (Castleman & Page, in press) can lead to improved outcomes for students. Students, however, face a number of complex decisions after successfully submitting a FAFSA, including filing any other financial aid applications that may be required for institutional or state aid, interpreting financial aid awards and making decisions about whether and how much to borrow each year, and determining and enrolling in an appropriate loan repayment plan. This panel examines policies and interventions at each of these stages in the financial aid process. The authors of the first paper, titled “The Impact of Institutional Financial Aid Forms on College Aid Policy and Access,” examine the impact of the CSS PROFILE, a campus financial aid application required by many selective colleges, and offers implications for future behavioral interventions. In the second paper, “The Role of Colleges in Impacting Students’ Financial Aid Behaviors,” the authors evaluate the impact of a text message campaign at a selective public university on whether low-income students apply for financial aid. The authors of the third paper, titled “Does Salient Financial Information Affect Academic Performance and Borrowing Behavior Among College Students?” evaluate the impact of an informational intervention delivered with financial aid awards on academic performance and borrowing. In the final paper, “Behavioral Biases and the Design of Student Loan Repayment Schemes,” the author examines students’ decisions relating to loan repayment plans. Together, these papers offer insight into federal policy efforts aimed at simplifying the college-going process and helping students make more informed college decisions.