Marifian, Elise, Jeffrey Smith, and Sarah Turner. 2024. "Bucky, Becky, and Student Financial Aid Policy Design." The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 711(1): 200-224.
Abstract
Bucky’s Tuition Promise (BTP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison offers generous financial aid to low-income, in-state students. Unlike many similar programs at other public universities, financial eligibility for BTP depends solely on a family’s adjusted gross income (AGI), rather than on the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or some function of the poverty line. This program design aims to make eligibility simpler and more transparent for students and their families and thereby to encourage application and matriculation. We investigate the implications of the program design for who does and does not receive additional institutional aid, with a particular focus on the marginal group of BTP-eligible students who lack federal Pell Grant eligibility. With this analysis, we aim to motivate a broader discussion of different notions of equity in financial aid administration and the tough trade-offs implicit in simplifying eligibility criteria.
Published version on journal webpage (open access)
This paper is published in a special issue of the ANNALS in honor of former UW-Madison chancellor (and former Ford School dean at Michigan) Becky Blank. I first met Becky when she was an assistant professor at Northwestern and I was an assistant professor at Western Ontario. We were on at least one dissertation committee together at Michigan. And, perhaps not surprisingly, she was the only university president who sent me a recruiting email when I was on the job market back in 2016, though she carefully noted that she was not writing to me in her capacity as chancellor, because the chancellor did not meddle in the hiring decisions of individual department, but rather in her capacity as a member of the economics department. She is very much missed.
