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Efforts to improve college-completion rates have dominated higher education policy agendas. Performance-based funding (PBF) intends to improve college completion and links state funding for public colleges and universities to performance measures. One critique of PBF policies is that institutions might restrict student access. This study uses a difference-in-differences design and institution-level data from 2001 to 2014 to examine whether 4-year, public institutions become more selective or enroll fewer underrepresented students under PBF. Our findings, supported by various robustness checks, suggest that institutions subject to PBF enroll students with higher standardized test scores and enroll fewer first-generation students. PBF models tied to institutions’ base funding are more strongly associated with increased standardized test scores and enrollment of Pell students.
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Public Universities: The Supply Side of Building a Skilled Workforce
Over the past few decades, public universities have faced significant declines in state funding per student. We investigate whether these declines affected the educational and research outcomes of these schools. Declining funding induced public universities to shift toward tuition as their primary source of revenue. Selective research universities enrolled more out-of-state and international students who pay full fare and increased in-state tuitions, moderating impacts on expenditures. Public universities outside the research sector had fewer options to replace stagnating state appropriations, requiring diminished expenditures and increased in-state tuitions. We find suggestive evidence that cuts have negatively affected research, and more definitive evidence that they adversely affected degree attainment at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1735786
- PAR ID:
- 10282003
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- RSF
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2377-8261
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 43-66
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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