Events

Abstract: The discussion about the costs of college education, who has to pay for it, and its implication for social inequality and mobility, is of primary importance for educational stratification scholars and policy makers. While increasing evidence has accumulated on the impact of access to secure funding in reducing enrollment and completion gaps in higher education, there is less evidence on how large-scale policy changes on college funding would affect students’ decision earlier in their educational trajectories, in anticipation of benefiting from such policies in the future. In this study I show how the introduction of tuition-free college in Chile (2016), a drastic departure from the country’s previous focus on partial scholarships and loans, affected the educational trajectories of high school students. Using administrative data analyzed in an event-study framework, I provide evidence of the positive effect that increasing access to guaranteed funding for higher education had on secondary students’ trajectories, lowering dropout rates especially among students in the most socially disadvantaged schools.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Trinity Term is convened by Richard Breen.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.