Investigating the Impact of the Pittsburgh Promise

   Place-based promise scholarships are a relatively recent innovation in 
   the space of college access and success. Although evidence on the 
   impact of some of the earliest place-based scholarships has begun to 
   emerge, the rapid proliferation of promise programs largely has 
   preceded empirical evidence of their impact. 

   This paper analyses 
   the causal effect of the Pittsburgh Promise on students’ immediate 
   postsecondary attainment and early college persistence outcomes. Both 
   analytic approaches yield similar conclusions. 

   As a result of Promise 
   eligibility, Pittsburgh Public School graduates are approximately 5 
   percentage points more likely to enroll in college, particularly 
   four-year institutions; 10 percentage points more likely to select a 
   Pennsylvania institution; and 4 to 7 percentage points more likely to 
   enroll and persist into a second year of postsecondary education. 
   Impacts vary with changes over time in the program structure and 
   opportunities, and are larger for those responsive to the Promise 
   opportunity, as instrumental variable-adjusted results reveal. 
   Although the Pittsburgh Promise represents a sizeable investment, 
   conservative cost–benefit calculations indicate positive returns. Even 
   so, an important question is whether locally funded programs such as 
   the Pittsburgh Promise are economically sustainable in the long run.