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Jeffrey T. Denning
A Family Affair: The Effects of College on Parent and Student Finances
Tags: College readinessPaying for college is often a family affair, with both parents and students contributing. We study the effects of college on family finances using administrative data on the universe of federal aid applicants in California linked to credit records. We provide the first comprehensive analysis of… more →
The Graduation Part II: Graduate Program Graduation Rates
Tags: Higher educationThis paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Despite conventional wisdom that most graduate students complete their programs, only 58 percent of who started their program in 2004… more →
PLUS or Minus? The Effect of Graduate School Loans on Access, Attainment, and Prices
Tags: Higher educationIn 2006, the federal government effectively uncapped student borrowing for graduate programs with the introduction of the Graduate PLUS loan program. Access to additional federal loans increased graduate students’ borrowing and shifted the composition of their loans from private to federal debt… more →
Class Rank and Long-Run Outcomes
Tags: MotivationThis paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long-run effects of a student’s ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data on all public-school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third-grade academic rank,… more →
Taking It to the Limit: Effects of Increased Student Loan Availability on Attainment, Earnings, and Financial Well-Being
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceGrowing reliance on student loans and repayment difficulties have raised concerns of a student debt crisis in the United States. However, little is known about the effects of student borrowing on human capital and long-run financial well-being. We use variation induced by recent expansions in… more →
Why Have College Completion Rates Increased?
Tags: Higher educationCollege completion rates declined from the 1970s to the 1990s. We document that this trend has reversed--since the 1990s, college completion rates have increased. We investigate the reasons for the increase in college graduation rates. Collectively, student characteristics, institutional… more →
Decreasing Time to Baccalaureate Degree in the United States
Tags: Higher educationAfter increasing in the 1970s and 1980s, time to bachelor’s degree has declined since the 1990s. We document this fact using data from three nationally representative surveys. We show that this pattern is occurring across school types and for all student types. Using administrative student… more →
Winners and Losers? The Effect of Gaining and Losing Access to Selective Colleges on Education and Labor Market Outcomes
Selective college admissions are fundamentally a question of tradeoffs: Given capacity, admitting one student means rejecting another. Research to date has generally estimated average effects of college selectivity, and has been unable to distinguish between the effects on students gaining… more →
Nudging at Scale: Experimental Evidence from FAFSA Completion Campaigns
Kelli A. Bird, Benjamin L. Castleman, Jeffrey T. Denning, Joshua Goodman, Cait Lamberton, Kelly Ochs Rosinger.Tags: Higher education, Student supportsDo nudge interventions that have generated positive impacts at a local level maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? What specific mechanisms explain the positive impacts of promising smaller-scale nudges? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a… more →
Maxed Out? The Effect of Larger Student Loan Limits on Borrowing and Education Outcomes
Tags: Higher educationDespite large and growing student loan balances, there is relatively little evidence on the effects of access to student loans on borrowing and educational outcomes. We examine the effect of access to credit by using policy variation in the maximum federal student loan amounts available to U.S.… more →