Presenter(s): Neila Kerkebane—Economics
Faculty Mentor(s): Jonathan Davis
Session 5.5: McNair Scholars Presentations
The United States has experienced an increase in inequality, especially since the 1980s . One question that has been asked repeatedly by researchers and policy makers is how can we promote equality of opportunity? In this thesis, I study the impact of increases in college and university tuition on the enrollment of low-income students . Since higher education has been identified by the literature as a main path for intergenerational socioeconomic mobility, it is important to encourage low-income students to attend colleges and universities . Yet their participation at the moment is lower than their counterparts in higher income classes . We need to identify what is influencing low participation of low-income students in higher education in order to provide solutions to make higher education more accessible for this segment of the population . This study estimates the elasticity of college enrollment to posted tuition rates using administrative data on 2,462 colleges and universities . The aim of the paper is to understand whether a lack of information about posted and actual tuition rates is a barrier to the enrollment of low-income students . For this analysis, I am using a fixed effect model to control for all time-invariant characteristics about the college and specific characteristics .