Investing in Schooling In Chile: The Role of Information about Financial Aid for Higher Education

Researchers created a fifteen-minute video featuring the stories of adults who grew up in poor families in urban Chile and who successfully completed postsecondary studies with financial aid. As the adults describe how they funded their studies at universities or at vocational schools, the video provides detailed information about how different financial aid options work, the academic requirements for each option, and the timelines to apply. To determine the effect of exposure to the video and of informing parents about financial aid, the researchers randomly assigned 226 schools to one of three groups:
1) Student group: students were shown the video in the classroom
2) Family group: students were given a DVD copy of the video and were
encouraged to watch it at home with their parents
3) Comparison group: no information given

2009-09-01

2009-12-31

- Student financial aid knowledge and expectations at follow-up
- Student educational expectations
- Student absenteeism
- Student effort and performance (measured through grades)
- Student enrollment in a college-preparatory high school

The evaluation focused on eighth-grade students in the poorest 40 percent of schools in the Metropolitan Region of Chile, which includes the capital city of Santiago. The intervention targeted eighth graders because most students in Chile have to choose between attending a college-preparatory school or a vocational high school at that point. In this study, 75 percent of students attended schools that ended in eighth grade, while the rest could either continue studying at the same school or switch to another one. In principle, the information about the admissions process and financial aid options could enable students to make informed decisions about what high school to attend and could also motivate them to invest in their schooling throughout their high school career. The researchers used administrative data as well as surveys measuring knowledge of financial aid options and students’ academic effort and preferences.

Randomization done in office by a computer.

School-level randomization; treatment was randomized at the school level to avoid information spillovers at the grade-level.

Yes

226 low-income schools

6,233 eighth-grade students in 226 low-income schools

56 schools were randomly assigned to the Student information treatment (group A), 56 schools to the Family information treatment (group B),
and the remaining 114 schools to the control group; 3,054 students in all treatment groups (with 1,536 students in group A and 1,518 students in group B) and 3,179 students in control group

Minimum detectable effect size is minimum difference in Student-Family treatment effects that we can detect given our sample size, number of clusters, a power of 0.8 and the intra-cluster correlation in the specific outcome variable at baseline. The sample allows us to obtain a power of 80%, with a significance level of 5%, a minimum detectable effect size of 0.2 standard deviation, intracluster correlation of 0.27, cluster size of 30 and an R2 of 0.26-0.29.

We investigate the impacts of providing low-income Chilean adolescents with information about how to finance higher education and ask whether providing parents with the same information magnifies the effects on schooling outcomes. We randomly assigned eighth graders and some parents to receive information about aid for higher education. Exposure to information raised college preparatory high school enrollment, primary school attendance, and financial aid knowledge, with gains concentrated among medium- and high-grade students. Parental exposure to information did not significantly magnify these effects. Our results demonstrate that access to relevant information about financial aid affects important schooling choices long before tertiary education begins.

Dinkelman, Taryn, and Claudia Martinez. 2014. "Investing in Schooling in Chile: The Role of Information About Financial Aid for Higher Education." The Review of Economics and Statistics 96(2): 244-257.

https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publications/229%20Higher%20Education%20in%20Chile%20May2014.pdf