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According to researchers with the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study (WSLS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, low-income students who receive Pell Grants and are unlikely to finish college get a significant boost in college persistence from additional financial aid.

"Our findings suggest that making college more affordable for students who were initially unlikely to succeed in college increased their college persistence rates over the first three years of college by about 17 percentage points," Sara Goldrick-Rab, WSLS co-director and associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology, said in a statement.

Since 2008, the researchers have been studying the impact of the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars (FFWS), which provides $3,500 per year to full-time federal Pell Grant recipients enrolled in the University of Wisconsin System. The researchers collected survey and interview data on 1,500 students, including 600 grant recipients and 900 eligible non-recipients.

"It's common to focus only on the average effects of financial aid programs, but it's clear that often policies work better for some people than others," Goldrick-Rab said. "In this case, the Wisconsin grant really helped some students, didn't help others, and may even have had adverse consequences for another group."

"When the researchers considered students' expected persistence, they saw that receiving the additional grant did make a difference," writes The Chronicle of Higher Education's Beckie Supiano. "For example, 72 percent of students who were least likely to persist and received the grant were still in college three years into the program, compared with 55 percent of students who were least likely to persist and did not receive the money."

In addition to looking at financial need, the researchers also examined the challenges faced by first-generation college students and those without adequate academic preparation. The study found that students whose parents hadn't gone to college and those with lower test scores were initially much less likely to persist in college, while those with high test scores and those whose parents held bachelor's degrees began with a high probability of finishing.

Additional findings from the study are presented and discussed in a working paper entitled "Conditional Cash Transfers and College Persistence: Evidence from a Randomized Need-Based Grant Program" [PDF file].

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