
Bridget Terry LongHarvard University | Harvard · Harvard Graduate School of Education
Bridget Terry Long
Doctor of Philosophy
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53
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4,267
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July 2001 - present
July 2000 - present
Publications
Publications (53)
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the primary gatekeeper to secure financial aid for college. The federal government instituted two changes to the process in 2017, commonly known as “prior-prior year” FAFSA: (1) an earlier start date that lengthens the filing period and (2) the ability to use completed taxes from the prior cal...
Although workers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields earn above-average wages, the number of college graduates prepared for STEM jobs lags behind employer demand. A key question is how to recruit and retain college students in STEM majors. We offer new evidence on the role of financial aid in supporting STEM attainment. Expl...
While increasing numbers of students have gained access to higher education during the last several decades, postsecondary persistence and academic success remain serious concerns with only about half of college entrants completing degrees. Given concerns about affordability and resources, policymakers and administrators wonder how financial aid im...
This paper measures the effects of collegiate class size on college retention and graduation. Class size is a perennial issue in research on primary and secondary schooling. However, few researchers have focused on the causal impacts of collegiate class size. Whereas college students have greater choice of classes, selection problems and nonrandom...
We examine graduate student teaching as an input to two production processes: the education of undergraduates and the development of graduate students themselves. Using fluctuations in full-time faculty availability as an instrument, we find undergraduates are more likely to major in a subject if their first course in the subject was taught by a gr...
Low rates of college completion are a major problem in the United States. Less than 60 percent of students at four-year colleges graduate within six years, and at some colleges, the graduation rate is less than 10 percent. Additionally, many students enter higher education ill-prepared to comprehend college-level course material. Some estimates sug...
Gaps in average college success among students of differing backgrounds have persisted in the United States for decades. One of the primary ways that federal and state governments have attempted to ameliorate such gaps is by providing need-based financial aid to low-income students. In this paper, we examine the impact of eligibility for the Florid...
Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. We present results from a randomized field experiment in which low-income individuals receiving tax preparation help were also offered immediate assistance a...
This Brief summarizes a study that addresses the impact of remedial and developmental courses on students with a range of levels of preparedness. Using longitudinal data from Tennessee, the authors estimate the effects of placement into varying levels of mathematics, reading, and writing courses for students attending public two- and four-year coll...
Higher education has increasingly relied on part-time, adjunct instructors. Critics argue that adjuncts reduce educational quality because they often have less education than full-time professors. On the other hand, by specializing in teaching or being concurrently employed, adjuncts could enhance learning experiences. This paper quantifies how adj...
Financial aid programs to expand college access can be improved in the US by simplifying processes and favoring grants over loans and need-based criteria in place of merit-based criteria. Three main lessons are clear from the numerous studies on financial aid. The first lesson is that information and the design of a policy are crucial factors in de...
The finances of colleges and universities are increasingly under the scrutiny of policymakers, researchers, and families. Much of the attention focused on money has been in reaction to skyrocketing tuition costs. From 1980–81 to 2008–09, the average list price of a public, four-year institution rose twice as fast as inflation.1 Questions about whet...
Gaining entrance to a four-year college or university, particularly a selective institution, has become increasingly competitive over the last several decades. We document this phenomenon and show how it has varied across different parts of the student ability distribution and across region, with the most pronounced increases in competition being f...
Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like college financial aid have spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. This project examines the effects of two experimental treatments designed to test of the importance of simplification and information using a random assignme...
Each year, thousands graduate high school academically underprepared for college. Many must take remedial or developmental postsecondary coursework, and there is a growing debate about the effectiveness of such programs. This paper examines the effects of remediation using a unique data set of over 28,000 students. To account for selection biases,...
Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete a baccalaureate degree. However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at a two-year institution. This paper examines how the outcomes of community college entrants compare to similar stude...
Remedial or developmental courses are the most common instruments used to assist postsecondary students who are not ready for college-level coursework. However, despite its important role in higher education and substantial costs, there is little rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of college remediation on the outcomes of students. This study u...
Years of research support the notion that financial aid can influence students' postsecondary decisions, but questions remain about the best ways to design and implement such programs and policies. This paper serves as a discussion of the research literature on the effectiveness of financial aid with special attention to its implications for policy...
Background/Context
The essay provides a comprehensive review of work by economists and others in related quantitative disciplines on the transition of students to college. A particular emphasis is given to the role of price and financial aid although issues related to college preparation, access, and persistence are also investigated. The final sec...
The literature generally points to a negative relationship between female education and fertility. Citing this pattern, policymakers have advocated educating girls and young women as a means to reduce population growth and foster sustained economic and social welfare in developing countries. This paper tests whether the relationship between fertili...
Incl. bibl. In this article, Bridget Terry Long and Erin Riley argue that in recent years, U.S. financial aid policy has shifted its emphasis from expanding college access for low-income students toward defraying the costs for middle- and upper-income families. They explain how loans, merit-based aid, and education tax breaks are increasingly repla...
The returns to college are substantial, including increased earnings and public benefits, such as better health and increased involvement in public service and giving. As a result, since the introduction of the Guaranteed Student Loan program in 1965 and the Pell Grant in 1972, the federal government has experimented with using financial aid to inc...
Each year, thousands graduate high school academically underprepared for college. Many must take remedial or developmental postsecondary coursework, and there is a growing debate about the effectiveness of such programs. This paper examines the effects of remediation using a unique data set of over 28,000 students. To account for selection biases,...
This chapter explores the characteristics and features of remedial education at community colleges, examines participation in these courses, and reviews findings on the effects of remediation on student decisions and outcomes.
Although women have matched or surpassed men in many educational outcomes, female students remain much less likely to major in quantitative, technical, and science-related fields. This under-representation may have serious implications for women's returns to education, occupational segregation, and earnings inequality. To address this problem, some...
Financing and financial aid issues in higher education continue to plague state policymakers and higher education leaders. Every year, they struggle with questions of how to meet growing needs through state allocations, how best to ensure shared and equitable responsibility for paying for higher education, and how best to use subsidies such as fina...
College and universities are increasingly using part-time, adjunct instructors on their faculties to facilitate greater fiscal flexibility. However, critics argue that the use of adjuncts is causing the quality of higher education to deteriorate. This paper addresses questions about the impact of adjuncts on student outcomes. Using a unique dataset...
This paper examines the effects of financial aid policies on the behavior of post-secondary institutions. Using the introduction of the Georgia HOPE Scholarship as a natural experiment, it investigates the impact of the policy on college pricing, institution aid, expenditures, and state appropriations. The results suggest that four-year colleges in...
This report was prepared for a research project undertaken by The Education Resources Institute (TERI) with support from Lumina Foundation for Education. The purpose of this project was to develop an agenda of research studies and demonstrations that would, if implemented, improve the understanding of the potential impact of student aid program des...
This paper examines the importance of format in aid programs, focusing on state appropriations to public postsecondary institutions. These funds subsidize costs for in-state students, but they may also influence choices between institutions due to their in-kind format. Using the conditional logistic choice model and extensive match-specific informa...
This paper examines how individuals from 1972, 1982, and 1992 chose whether and where to attend college by estimating the importance of postsecondary costs and quality. Using the conditional logistic choice model to exploit extensive match-specific information between individuals and colleges and include the thousands of alternatives available to p...
Remediation is an important part of American higher education with approximately one-third of students requiring remedial or developmental courses. However, at an annual cost of over $1 billion for public colleges alone, policymakers have become critical of the practice. Despite the growing debate and the thousands of under prepared students who en...
One of the most pronounced trends in higher education over the last decade has been the increased reliance on instructors outside of the traditional full-time, Ph.D.-trained model. Nearly 43 percent of all teaching faculty were part-time in 1998, and at selective colleges, graduate assistant instructors teach over 35 percent of introductory courses...
This paper examines the effects of financial aid policies on the behavior of post-secondary institutions. Using the introduction of the Georgia HOPE Scholarship as a natural experiment, it investigates the impact of the policy on college pricing, institution aid, expenditures, and state appropriations. The results suggest that four-year colleges in...
While most of the literature on the impact of financial aid policy focuses on the reactions of individuals, researchers have long theorized that the policies may also impact the behavior of postsecondary institutions. This paper sheds light on this issue by utilizing the Georgia HOPE Scholarship as a unique natural experiment. The effects on tuitio...
The 1997 creation of the Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits marked a dramatic shift in the way in which federal support for college expenses is distributed to students and their families. Unlike other aid programs, the tax credits have exceptionally broad eligibility requirements, and there is a significant delay between when a recipient enroll...
We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for wi...
One of the most pronounced trends in higher education over the last decade has been the increased reliance on adjunct professors. While proponents of adjuncts claim that they are e ssential t o maintaining first-rate universities in a tight fiscal environment, critics argue that using adjuncts deteriorates the quality of higher education. Surprisin...
It is generally believed that access to financial aid will increase the likelihood that students will attend and graduate from college. There is a surprising lack of research, however, on the consequences when postsecondary institutions lose eligibility to disburse financial aid. This paper provides what I believe to be the first causal estimates o...