To make high-quality research more accessible and easier to explore.

Fields:

College Cost and Time to Complete a Degree: Evidence from Tuition Discontinuities

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2012 94(3), 699-711 open access
University tuition typically remains constant throughout the years of enrollment while delayed degree completion is increasingly a problem for academic institutions around the world. Theory suggests that if continuation tuition were raised, the probability of late graduation would be reduced. Using a regression discontinuity design on data from Bocconi University in Italy, we show that a 1,000 euro increase in continuation tuition reduces the probability of late graduation by 5.2% when the benchmark probability is 80%. This decline is not associated with an increase in the dropout rate or a fall in the quality of students performance.