What Does Free Community College Buy? Early Impacts from the Oregon Promise

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the Oregon Promise, a state‐level program that exclusively subsidizes in‐state community college attendance. I estimate impacts using a difference‐in‐difference design that links students in states with essentially universal 10th‐grade PSAT coverage to national‐level postsecondary enrollment data. I find that the implementation of the Oregon Promise increased enrollment at two‐year colleges by roughly four to five percentage points for the first two eligible cohorts. In the first year of the program, the increase in community college enrollment comes primarily from students shifting out of four‐year colleges, whereas in the second year the program predominately increases overall postsecondary enrollment.