It Isn’t Just Money: The Effects of Financial Aid on Student Persistence

Abstract

This meta-analysis integrates thirty-one studies by converting each study result into the common metric of effect size. The meta-analysis examining the total sample found financial aid to have a small, but significant, positive effect on student persistence, thereby enabling lower-income students to persist at a rate roughly equal to that of middle- and upper-income students. The length of persistence measured, the type of institution attended, and whether studies controlled for academic ability are mediators influencing the magnitude and direction of the effect size.