Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy, The Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia
Ben Castleman is an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Ben’s research focuses on policies to improve college access and success for low-income students. Several of his papers examine innovative strategies to deliver high-quality information about the college-going process to low-income students and their families, and to ease the process of students and families getting professional support when they need assistance. He has conducted several randomized trials to investigate how the offer of additional support during the summer after high school impacts the rate and quality of low-income students’ college enrollment. In addition, Ben uses quasi-experimental methods to study the impact of state and federal need-based grant programs on students’ long-term collegiate outcomes. His research has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, as well as in Time Magazine, USA Today, and the Huffington Post.
While educators and policy makers have invested substantial resources to support high school seniors and their families to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), considerably less attention has been devoted to helping students re-file their FAFSA each year they are in college. Yet, students need to renew the FAFSA annually to maintain their financial aid; among freshmen Pell Grant recipients in good academic standing, a substantial share does not successfully re-file their FAFSA. In this paper we investigate, through a randomized controlled trial design, the impact of a low-touch intervention in which we sent college freshman a series of personalized text message reminders related to FAFSA re-filing. The messages (1) provided information about where to obtain help with financial aid; (2) reminded students about important aid-related deadlines and requirements; and (3) offered assistance on financial-aid related processes. The intervention cost approximately $5 per student served. The intervention produced large and positive effects among freshmen at community colleges. Specifically, text recipients at community colleges were nearly 12 percentage points more likely to persist into the fall of their sophomore year of college compared to community college freshmen who did not receive this outreach, and were almost 14 percentage points more likely to remain continuously enrolled through the spring of sophomore year. By contrast, the intervention did not improve sophomore year persistence among freshmen at four-year institutions, among whom the rate of persistence was already high.
Student loan borrowing has emerged as a top policy concern, particularly for community college and for-profit student populations, whose loan default rates have risen considerably over time. Much of the policy attention has focused on helping students make more informed loan repayment decisions. Yet supporting students to make more informed initial borrowing decisions may reduce the likelihood that students encounter debt-related challenges in the future. In partnership with the Community College of Baltimore County, a large, urban community college, we designed a text messaging campaign to prompt new loan applicants to make informed and active choices about how much they borrowed in student loans. The texts provided students with simplified information about the origination process and offered students the opportunity to connect one-on-one with a financial aid counselor for assistance. We find that the text campaign led to substantial reductions in student borrowing, with the most pronounced effects among Black students, low-income students, and students with lower high school GPAs. In future analyses we will investigate the impact of the text campaign on students’ academic and financial credit outcomes.