In fall 2016, the University of Michigan (UM) implemented the HAIL Scholarship Study, an RCT to test whether the offer of personalized financial aid can increase enrollment of students from low-income families. HAIL is a low-cost, personalized intervention providing a no-strings-attached, four-year guaranteed scholarship offer to high-achieving low-income students to attend UM. HAIL has been very successful— more than doubling application and enrollment at UM among Michigan students from low-income families. To better understand the mechanisms and take-up rates for the HAIL Scholarship Study, PIRL is conducting qualitative interviews with HAIL-eligible high school seniors in Michigan alongside a team at UM.

This mixed methods study with Nicholas Papageorge (Economics, JHU) examines how beliefs about educational attainment and anticipated adverse shocks (e.g., evictions, incarcerations or deaths of family members, or violence) relate to educational plans and actual attainment for disadvantaged youth. The project is methodologically unique in that qualitative data gathered through open ended interviews of students making decisions will be used to specify a structural econometric model of post-secondary educational decision-making. In turn, the structural model will shed light on what kinds of additional data should be collected to estimate parameters of a model that could be used to evaluate how counterfactual policies can improve outcomes.