Do Grants Improve the Outcomes of University Students in a Context with High Dropout Rates? Evidence from a Matching Approach

Marta Facchini (1, 2) , Moris Triventi (3) , Loris Vergolini

1 OSC - Observatoire sociologique du changement (Sciences Po, CNRS)
2 INED - Institut national d'études démographiques
3 UNITN - Università degli Studi di Trento = University of Trento

We investigate whether grants improve the academic outcomes of students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and, by this way, contribute to reducing inequalities of educational opportunities. Differently from most previous studies, we focus on Italy, a context with high dropout rates and prolonged duration of higher education studies. To estimate the causal effect of the grant we followed a counterfactual approach relying on a three-step reweighting matching procedure, applied to survey data collected at national level by ISTAT on a sample of upper secondary school graduates in 2004 and 2007. We find that grants reduce drop-out and increase timely graduation, with larger effects among males and students in Central-Southern Italy, those who are more at risk of withdrawal from university.

Mots clés: financial aid; drop-out; timely graduation; CEM; Entropy balancing

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Sociologie

Marta Facchini, Moris Triventi, Loris Vergolini. Do Grants Improve the Outcomes of University Students in a Context with High Dropout Rates? Evidence from a Matching Approach. Higher Education, 2021, 81, pp.917-934. ⟨10.1007/s10734-020-00586-3⟩. ⟨hal-03520886⟩