Unpaid Tuition Balances at Community Colleges: An Exploratory Analysis of State Debt Collection on Graduation

• In Event: The Pitfalls and Promise of Student Financial Aid

Abstract

An underexplored area of higher education finance is the effect of unpaid tuition balances on education outcomes of community college students. Employing Chen’s (2008) heterogenous model for student drop out, this quantitative analysis attempts start this conversation by constructing binary regression models and combing data from a single community college in the Midwest with graduation records from the National Student Clearing House to determine how an unpaid tuition balance influences a student’s odds of graduating three years after the unpaid question. Results suggest that students with unpaid tuition balances are twenty-five times less likely to graduate when compared to similar peers who did not have unpaid tuition balances. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Author

• Matthew Paul Ison, Ohio University