Higher education bursaries and performance: annual test scores, drop out and degree outcomes

尽管自2006/07年以来，为了应对围绕引入延迟学费制度的争议以及担心低收入学生会被阻止申请大学的担忧，大学投入了巨额的助学金支出（Barr, 2004），但很少有经验证据表明，助学金在鼓励低收入学生——或者实际上是来自任何背景的学生——上大学方面是有效的。英国唯一一项考察助学金对参与的影响的研究（Corver, 2009）发现，助学金对学生的决定没有显著影响。事实上，学生们更有可能选择奖学金低的学校，而不是奖学金高的学校，因为他们的决定是基于声望等其他因素。该项目的目的是通过关注年度学习成绩、辍学率和最终学位分类，了解高等教育助学金对本科生的教育成果是否有任何影响。虽然助学金可能对学生的参与决策影响不大，但每年向学生提供经济支持可能会产生其他积极影响。特别是，提供助学金可能意味着学生不必在学习期间就业，或者可能有额外的钱购买学术资料。因此，助学金可以对学生的学业表现产生积极影响，例如1)他们留在大学的可能性，2)他们的年度考试成绩，以及3)他们的学位分类。这些都是政府扩大参与议程的重要问题，因为他们关注的是低收入背景的学生一旦进入大学，在学位延续和成就方面的成功。可公开获得的数据不适合本项目，因为有关助学金支出的信息是在大学一级汇总的，与学生的学习成绩无关。因此，我正在从各个机构收集数据，随着时间的推移，对每个本科生的助学金奖励。除此之外，我还有每个学生的学习成绩信息，以及学生的性别和种族等其他信息。通过比较具有相似特征（例如，在社会经济背景、种族、性别方面）的个人，但由于他们所就读的机构或他们上大学的年份而获得不同水平的奖学金，可以评估奖学金的有效性。特别是，各院校的助学金支出差异很大（例如，2009年用于助学金和奖学金的支出在大学额外费用收入的1%至41%之间），这应该能够对助学金支出的有效性进行有力的估计。除了对政府扩大参与议程很重要外，研究结果显然会引起政策制定者和高等教育从业者的兴趣；机构在助学金上的支出很高，而各大学则采取了截然不同的方式来分配用于助学金的资源。了解这种支出是否有效以及如何进行优化是非常重要的。这项研究也将具有学术意义。这将有助于经济学文献研究支出对不可偿还学生资助的影响，探讨支付给学生的现金奖励是否会影响他们在大学的表现。此外，了解政策如何影响学习成绩对于理解政府如何促进人力资本积累非常重要。这项研究具有广泛的相关性，因为这些问题在各国都很重要，研究设计可以很容易地应用于其他地方。

Despite the huge outlay in bursary spending being carried out by universities since 2006/07 in response to controversy surrounding the introduction of the deferred tuition fee system and fears that low-income students would be deterred from applying to university (Barr, 2004), there remains little empirical evidence that bursaries are effective in encouraging low-income students - or indeed students from any background - to go to university. The only UK study examining the impact of bursaries on participation (Corver, 2009) found that bursaries have no significant effect on students' decisions. Students were in fact more likely to choose an institution with a low bursary than a high one basing their decisions on other factors such as prestige. The aim of this project is to understand if there is any impact of higher education bursaries on educational outcomes of undergraduate students at all, by focusing on annual academic performance, drop-out rates and final degree classification.Whilst it may be the case that bursaries have little impact on student participation decisions, providing financial support each year to students may have other positive impacts. In particular, the provision of bursaries may mean that students do not have to take up employment during study, or may have extra money to purchase academic materials. Thus, bursaries could have a positive impact on students' academic performance, such as 1) their likeliness to stay on at university, 2) their annual examination attainment, and 3) their degree classification. These are important issues for the government's widening participation agenda since they focus on the success of students from low income backgrounds once they are at university, in terms of degree continuation and attainment.Publicly available data is unsuitable for this project, since information on bursary spending is aggregated at university level and is not linked to the academic performance of students. Therefore, I am in the process of collecting data from individual institutions over time, on the bursary awards of each of their undergraduate students. Alongside this I have information on each student's academic performance, as well as other information about the students such as their gender and ethnicity. The effectiveness of bursaries would be evaluated by comparing individuals with similar characteristics (e.g. in terms of socio-economic background, ethnicity, gender) but receiving different levels of bursary due to the institution they are attending, or the year in which they attended university. In particular, there is wide variation in bursary spending by institutions (for example, spending on bursaries and scholarships ranged between 1% and 41% of universities' additional fee income in 2009) which should enable a robust estimation of the effectiveness of bursary spending. As well as being important to the government's widening participation agenda, the research findings will clearly be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners in higher education; institutional spending on bursaries is high, and universities have taken very different approaches to the resources devoted to spending. Understanding whether this spending is effective and how it can be optimised is extremely important.This research would also be of academic importance. It would contribute to the economic literature on the impact of spending on non-repayable student support, addressing whether cash incentives paid to students affect their performance at university. Furthermore, understanding how policy can affect academic performance is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation. This research has broad relevance because these issues are important across countries and the research design could be readily applied elsewhere.