Increasing student access through aid: Differences in difference-in-differences estimates

Abstract

Causal identification of a student aid program’s impact can be difficult as the best control group is often a small number of out-of-province students who likely differ from locals in unobservable ways. This paper evaluates the impacts of the 30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant using administrative data from the Ontario–Quebec border, where a large number of local students are subject to a different province’s unchanged aid program. The Grant improved access to education; cohorts enrolled after the Grant was announced come from poorer areas, but also achieved lower graduation rates than comparable local yet out-of-province students. I present estimates using three different control groups: a local-student comparison offers the largest results, with more traditional comparisons finding similar but smaller effects.