This volume was prepared by Benedikt Siegler while working at the Center for the Economics of Education of the Ifo Institute. It was completed in June 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU) in November 2014. The thesis includes...

The unprecedented challenges from COVID-19 present many institutions of higher education with liquidity, and even solvency, concerns. In this report, we provide guidance to institutions and policymakers about the short- and medium-term revenue losses that are likely to materialize as a result of...

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a major impact on higher education and affected students’ livelihoods and attainment of education. To help students during these challenging times the Federal CARES Act was established to provide financial relief and support students in their time of need,...

I evaluate a financial aid policy which automatically granted 1,800 euros annually to low-income students scoring in the top 5% of high school students and enrolling in higher education. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that it had no significant impact on various higher education...

I investigate how allowing lower tuition for undocumented students at public colleges improves education outcomes, changes institutional pricing patterns, and lowers long-run fertility rates. I use administrative data and a residual method to quantify the actual number of undocumented students...

As COVID-19 struck the United States in March 2020, sending the nation into lockdown, worry about the fate of private schools was high. These schools, which only survive if people can pay for them, seemed to face deep trouble. Many private schools have thin financial margins even in good...

Recent federal investigations and new regulations have resulted in restrictions on for-profit institutions’ access to federal student aid. We examine the enrollment effects of similar restrictions imposed on over 1,200 for-profit colleges in the 1990s. Using variation in regulations linked to...

This paper examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible...

For workers employed in the public and non-profit sectors, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program offers the potential for full forgiveness of federal student loans for those with 10-years of full-time work experience. In practice, the benefits of the PSLF program have been illusory...

The Developing Hispanic-Serving Institution (DHSI) Program is one of the largest federal grant programs that support Hispanic-Serving Institutions. We employ an eleven-year panel dataset of U.S. higher education institutions to implement a difference-in-differences (DID) design, two-way fixed...