Losing HOPE? A Competing Risks Analysis of Transfer Behavior Among Merit Aid Recipients

• In Event: State Policy and Educational Equity

Abstract

Using a single-spell discrete-time competing risks model, we examine the relationship between merit aid loss and four- to two-year transfer behavior and its implications for racial/ethnic and income disparities. Our results depict that Losing HOPE corresponds to a higher risk of reverse transfer, and the greatest potential for improving the HOPE retention rates occurs in the time period leading up to the first checkpoint. Moreover, merit aid loss disproportionately affects Black students’ probability of reverse transfer across the GPA eligibility thresholds, which poses negative implications for BA degree completion. Aspire recipients (low-income students) that lose their aid, however, are less likely than non-Aspire students to reverse transfer, potentially attributable to Pell-grant eligibility. Future research is necessary to disentangle these mechanisms. Policymakers should consider examining ways to mitigate student departure for these already disenfranchised subgroups such as revising renewal criteria.

Authors

• Cassandra S. Arroyo, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Yiping Bai, University of Michigan

• Stephen L. DesJardins, University of Michigan

• Brian McCall, University of Michigan