The Price of Pathways: Student Borrowing Behavior across Postsecondary Pathways Revisited

Transfer pathways are commonly associated with cost savings to students within the policy world. However, few have ventured to empirically examine whether traveling transfer pathways result in savings for students. Through this article, we report on analyses of this topic drawing on a custom linkage between Toronto District School Board, Postsecondary Student Information System, and Canada Student Loans Program administrative data. Such rich data allow us to estimate the relationship between traveling various pathways through Ontario postsecondary education (PSE) and (i) student's propensity to borrow from the CSLP, along with (ii) the total amount they borrowed, while (iii) controlling for a broader range of potential confounders than ever before. Our analyses provide the most conclusive evidence of the cost savings available through transfer pathways in Ontario PSE, and have implications for policy discourse on this topic across comparable jurisdictions.