Spending More or Spending Less? Institutional Finance Patterns and Position Counts After Tennessee Promise

• In Event: The Carrots, Sticks, and Unintended Consequences of State Higher Education Policy

Abstract

Research on college promise programs has focused almost exclusively on student outcomes. Though a robust body of literature exists to contextualize institutional responses to other forms of aid, little attention has been paid to community-college responses to these emerging scholarship programs. We present causal-inference estimates of changes to institutional spending and staffing patterns following implementation of Tennessee Promise. In the difference-in-differences framework, we achieve doubly-robust estimates through complementary matching and model-weighting estimation strategies to suggest Promise led to reduced spending per FTE in academic support and institutional support areas, but increased spending on scholarships. We find little change to staffing patterns, but estimates suggest a reduction in student affairs personnel. These findings carry important implications for policy and future research.

Authors

• Alex Monday, Tennessee Higher Education Commission

• Taylor K. Odle, University of Pennsylvania