Almost no impact of Florida’s merit aid scholarship on college enrollment and degree completion

This study replicates and extend prior work on Florida’s Bright Futures merit aid scholarship to consider its effect on college enrollment and degree completion. 

The authors estimate causal impacts using a regression discontinuity design to exploit SAT thresholds that strongly determine eligibility. They find no positive impacts on attendance or attainment, and instrumental variable results generally reject estimates as small as 1 to 2 percentage points. 

Across subgroups, the authors find that eligibility slightly reduces 6-year associate degree attainment for lower socioeconomic status students and may induce small enrollment shifts among Hispanic and White students toward 4-year colleges. Their findings of these minimal-at-best impacts contrast those of prior works, attributable in part to methodological improvements and more robust data, and further underscore the importance of study replication.