Can Light‐Touch College‐Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

Abstract

I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, low-income students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.ABSTRACT I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, lowincome students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.

Experimental Evidence on the Effects (or Lack Thereof) of Informational Framing During the College Transition

“…Overall, the results of this experiment do not suggest that strategic framing of informational messages is appreciably more effective than providing informational text messages at all. This is consistent with the mixed evidence in studies that have compared the relative efficacy of behavioral frames in text messaging interventions, as well as the null effects found in other studies that have taken text messaging interventions to state and national scale (e.g., Bird et al, 2019; Gurantz et al, 2019; Hyman, 2020). The mixed results in the literature raise questions regarding the way in which informational interventions are personalized and by whom they are delivered.…”

Increasing Economic Diversity at a Flagship University: Results from a Large-Scale, Randomized Trial

“…The magnitudes of these effects are much larger than those in previous interventions with similar goals (Hoxby and Turner 2013;Bettinger et al 2012;Goldrick-Rab et al 2016;Bergman, Denning and Manoli 2017;Oreopoulos and Ford 2019;Gurantz et al 2019;Hyman 2019). Several dimensions of the HAIL intervention set it apart, and plausibly explain the size of its effect.…”

Can Re-Enrollment Campaigns Help Dropouts Return to College? Evidence From Florida Community Colleges

“…Castleman et al (2014) found that contacting high school graduates via phone, email, and text messaging increased the likelihood of college enrollment among Hispanic males. Hyman (2020) mailed letters encouraging high-achieving high school seniors to consider college and engage with a custom website containing additional information. The author reported that low-income students were more likely to attend college after receiving the informational letters, but the results appeared to be driven by low-income student enrollment at 4-year institutions.…”