This reportstudies the impact of the higher education grant system for less privileged students in Portugal on academic success. Eligibility to the grant is conditioned on having household per-capita income below a threshold.Thanks to administrative data on the applicants, linked with data on students' academic situation, we are able to reconstruct the full academic history of students receiving and students not receiving the grant and adopt a regression discontinuity approach. The analyses on the full sample of first year students show a negative effect of the grant on the probability of drop out at the beginning of the first year, a positive effect on the probability of reaching at least 36 credits and of reaching all the credits in which the students are enrolled in at the end of the first year, and a positive effect on the probability of graduating in time. We investigate whether these main results are driven by particular types of students or university programmes. The results of this heterogeneity analysis show that the impact of the grant is different by students' characteristics: The effect is higher for males, for students residing in less-privileged regions, and for students enrolled in a bachelor degree and attending a public university.

GUTHMULLER Sophie;  MERONI Elena Claudia; 

2022-04-07

Publications Office of the European Union

JRC128577

978-92-76-49649-6 (online),   

1831-9424 (online),   

EUR 31031 EN,    OP KJ-NA-31031-EN-N (online),   

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC128577,   

10.2760/95533 (online),