Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In 2002, the Colombian government, with the support from the World Bank, introduced a subsidized loan program—Acceso con Calidad a la Educacion Superior (Access with Quality to Higher Education, or ACCES)—to increase students’ access to higher education. This program has provided college loans to nearly a half million Colombians over the past decade. The ACCES program determined prospective student’ loan eligibility based on their scores on the high school exit exam (Saber11, equivalent to SATs in the US). Given the change in the loan eligibility rules in 2009, we capture the complexity of the changes in loan eligibility cutoffs in our evaluation of the ACCES program. Our attention to the assignment rules allows us to better evaluate the efficacy of student loan program on educational outcomes overall, and the heterogeneous treatment effects of the program by region, and over time. In our evaluation, we include educational outcomes such as students’ college/university enrollment, as well as graduation and dropout rates.