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Increasing the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees is a national priority and one way to promote the socioeconomic mobility of students from low-income families. Prior research examining why students do not complete STEM majors often points to students' lack of academic preparation, preferences for non-STEM majors, or lack of information about the value of STEM. This paper uses a randomized experiment to investigate an alternative explanation, that some students lack the financial resources to succeed in demanding majors. In a control group of university students from low-income families, 18.6% of students had declared a STEM major by their third year of college. In a treatment group who were offered additional need-based grant aid upon entering college, 26.5% of students declared a STEM major. Among students who had graduated within six years after entering college, 12.2% of control group graduates had earned a STEM degree compared to 20.2% of treatment group students. Need-based grants thus appear to have the potential to increase the share of low-income students studying and earning degrees in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address whether the provision of contextual information about where students live and learn has the potential to expand postsecondary opportunities to students from disadvantaged neighborhoods and high schools. To examine this question, we describe the results of field experiments with admissions officers working in eight universities who re-read real applications from previous admissions cycles with a dashboard of contextual data about the applicant's neighborhood and high school. In this low-stakes context, admissions officers from institutions utilizing holistic admissions practices were more likely to recommend admitting low-SES applicants when provided with contextual data. The experiment also primed admissions readers to treat students from highly disadvantaged high school and neighborhood contexts more favorably relative to the results of the high-stakes official read, even when the dashboard was not shown to study participants. The results of this experiment suggest that contextualized data can improve equity in admissions, but fidelity to holistic admissions practices is crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More states are using performance-based funding (PBF) systems in an effort to incentivize public colleges to operate more effectively. Responding to concerns about equity, states are also adopting provisions that encourage colleges to serve more students who at risk of not completing college. In this paper, I examine whether PBF policies in general—and more specifically policies that have provisions designed to incentivize colleges to enroll underrepresented students—are associated with the number of lower-income, underrepresented minority, and adult students enrolled at four-year public colleges. Using a generalized difference-in-difference framework, I find little evidence that PBF systems as a whole meaningfully affect underrepresented student enrollment. However, the presence of bonuses for serving at-risk students appears to help mitigate any efforts to enroll a more advantaged student body that may be present in other PBF systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]