The Cost-effectiveness of Texting to Nudge Students Towards College Matriculation

As discussed in a previous Chicago Policy Review article, many students in the U.S. make an enormous mistake during the summer after their graduation from high school: despite intentions to enroll in postsecondary programs – often after being accepted – they don’t matriculate in the fall. They miss important deadlines, reevaluate their options, or face sticker shock when they receive enrollment materials. As a result, they either choose not to attend or simply fail to take necessary actions at the appropriate times. This decision can ultimately cost those students up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in foregone earnings over the course of their lifetimes.

A variety of policy interventions to increase college attendance and persistence have mixed results. One paper found that, across several studies, every additional $1,000 in grant aid tended to be associated with a four percentage point increase in college attendance, a cost-effective investment of government funds when considering the high returns to education. A summer counseling experiment, which cost $100 to $200 per student, increased enrollment by about three percentage points overall and by eight to ten percentage points among low-income students. Finally, an experiment with H&R Block found that assisting families with their financial aid applications cost just $87.50 per participant and increased attendance by about eight percentage points, almost seventy times as cost-effective as grant aid.

Still, the impacts of these programs pale in comparison to the impact of a recent experiment: “Summer Nudging: Can Personalized Text Messages and Peer Mentor Outreach Increase College Going Among Low-Income High School Graduates?” Researchers Benjamin Castleman and Lindsay Page found that a program involving text message reminders and counseling support was particularly effective for increasing college matriculation rates.

In 2012, the authors partnered with school districts in Texas, Philadelphia, and Massachusetts. Students were randomly assigned to receive either text message reminders with follow-up support from counselors where needed, personal outreach from peer mentors, or no support during the summer after college.

Students assigned to receive texts were sent a series of ten messages with timely information about matriculation requirements. For example, a text message may have reminded a student about deadlines to sign up for placement tests or to waive health insurance. Most texts included links directly to pages on the relevant college websites.

Notably, student populations in the study already had varying levels of structure and support on their paths to college. A non-profit organization in Boston called uAspire, for example, already provided significant college-planning support to its students. Students in Lawrence and Springfield, Massachusetts, had significantly less access to college-planning support, especially during the summer after graduating from high school.

The all-inclusive cost of the text message intervention, which included an offer of follow-up support with a counselor, was only $7 per student. While the text message intervention tended not to affect enrollment in areas like Boston, where students already had support, the intervention increased the likelihood of enrollment by more than seven percentage points in Lawrence and Springfield, making the intervention about seven hundred times as cost-effective as grant aid. By contrast, the peer mentorship program, which cost about $80 per student, increased likelihood of enrollment by just 4.5 percentage points.

The impressive returns on the text messaging intervention do not necessarily imply that the other programs are not valuable. The authors note that the returns to various interventions currently do not offer an “apples-to-apples” comparison. Previous research on interventions to improve postsecondary enrollment has involved different student populations at different times and in different stages on their paths to higher education.

Additionally, matriculation rates constitute only one measure of success on the path to postsecondary completion. Some argue that persistence rates are even more important than matriculation rates: perhaps it is better never to have attended college at all than to have enrolled and dropped out, acquiring debt in the process. And perhaps there are benefits to grant aid, such as reducing hardship, which should be considered regardless of the effect of grant aid on behavior.

However, the study underscores how simple, low-cost interventions can have large impacts. Anyone can forget to take important steps towards a goal, lose motivation, or get off track. But teenagers may flounder as they leave the secondary school system, especially those teens in disadvantaged areas, where structure and support on the path to college are lacking. Nudging these students toward academic success can be surprisingly cheap.

 

Article Source: Castleman, B. L., & Page, L. C. (2014). Summer nudging: Can personalized text messages and peer mentor outreach increase college going among low-income high school graduates? Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Feature Photo: cc/(mfillhart)