Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The price of college attendance is growing rapidly and is a substantial barrier to college completion for middle- and lower-income students. Financial aid is the main mechanism for reducing the price, but it is distributed using a complex system that includes a lengthy application (the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA) and numerous rules for continued receipt (Kelly & Goldrick-Rab, 2014; Goldrick-Rab, Kelchen, Harris & Benson, 2016). This administrative complexity appears to reduce its effectiveness (Dynarski & Wiederspan, 2012).

A growing body of empirical evidence demonstrates that personalized information and the offer of assistance can help address informational and behavioral barriers to FAFSA refiling and support students to meet Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements to remain eligible for aid. Yet, existing studies were conducted with relatively small samples of students and schools (e.g., Schudde & Scott-Clayton, 2014; Castleman & Page, 2016)

We examine the impacts of a nudging intervention aimed at increasing continued receipt of financial aid and continued enrollment in college. We test the impact of two variants of nudging to examine relative effectiveness, examine impacts on both proximal and distal outcomes to consider mechanisms, and test for heterogeneous treatment effects by institutional characteristics and students’ pre-program demographic and financial characteristics.

Our study relies on a nationally representative sample of college students in the 2015-16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:16) to implement a large-scale, randomized control trial of a multi-cohort text messaging campaign to increase (1) the share of degree-seeking students in the NPSAS:16 sample who successfully refile the FAFSA and meet requirements for SAP; and (2) the share of students who persist toward a college degree. We study a national subsample of 7,996 students from the NPSAS:16 sample who had not filed the FAFSA prior to the start of the intervention.

Aiming to help students maintain access to financial aid and persist in college, we offered—through our text-messaging partner Signal Vine—two main types of nudging interventions:(a) simplified information and prompts delivered via text messaging “nudges” and (b) text messages coupled with the offer to interact with an advisor from the non-profit organization College Possible. For the first type of message, we differentiated the language to try and ascertain why prior work finds that this approach can increase FAFSA filing and college persistence, using (a) a basic reminder and information, (b) the basic version along with cues about average peer behavior in accomplishing the task, and (c) the basic version along with a prompt for the student to commit to a particular day to accomplish the task.

We track outcomes using administrative data collected from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Student Clearinghouse and examine impacts on FAFSA filing, financial aid receipt, and college persistence and success. In addition, we consider usage data from our text messaging and advising partners to measure student engagement with the intervention. The results may be used by colleges and universities to improve degree completion rates by helping students retain their financial aid.