| Lesley Turner
Columbia University
Do colleges practice price discrimination? Implications for access and affordability
Given the significant returns to a college education and the precipitous growth in college tuition in the last decade, the question of whether low-income individuals still have access to a postsecondary education is important. Federal and state need-based aid aims to make college more affordable for students of limited means by reducing the actual cost of attendance. However, need-based aid has not kept pace with increasing tuition, and, in fact, low-income students have experienced the steepest increases in tuition, even after accounting for federal, state, and institutional grants. This project aims to disentangle the potential causes for the large increases in college costs and determine whether there is a role for financial aid policy to reduce these disparities. Using a detailed set of information on undergraduates, their college choices, and financial aid outcomes from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), I will test whether the growth of the for-profit sector of higher education has contributed to overall growth in tuition, investigate whether schools' ability to practice price discrimination affects the net cost of attending college, and, ultimately, the welfare, of different groups of students.
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