The Impact of Summer Pell Grants on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes of Disadvantaged Youth

Does providing year-round financial support to low-income college students improve their academic and employment outcomes?

The college completion gap between high-income and low-income students has persisted and grown in the last four decades: Youth from the lowest socioeconomic status quartile are four-times less likely to graduate with a bachelor's degree than youth from the highest SES quartile. The federal government's primary effort to increase post-secondary attainment for low-income students is the Pell grant program. While the traditional Pell grant covered a substantial proportion of college tuition, it funded only two semesters each year and did not include support for summer courses. The lack of summer coverage may hurt low-income students, as research indicates year-round enrollment improves persistence and completion. As such, the Summer Pell program was added to the traditional Pell program between 2009 and 2011, and again in 2017, allowing eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant to cover specified summer costs. Using administrative data from the City University of New York for over 240,000 students per year in 25 community colleges and universities between 2000–2019, this study examines the impact of the Summer Pell program on student persistence, completion, and employment. Employing a quasi-experimental design, Matsudaira and colleagues will look at the eight-year academic and employment impacts of the 2009 implementation of the Summer Pell and will further compare the changes in student take-up and the differential impact of the two Summer Pells. The major difference between the two programs initiated in 2009 and 2017 is the elimination of the full-time eligibility requirement in 2017.