effort and graduation rates.

For existing students, free college has little impact on effort and graduation rates, even when it is performance-based. This suggests that additional, complementary policies might be needed. Given the high persistence of performance, improving first-year performance and retention is critical. Supports such as tutoring, remedial education, mentoring, and advising might be helpful, particularly for the most disadvantaged students. Further, most college programs in Latin America start with classes specific to the major and rarely include general education requirements that transfer easily across majors. As a result, changing majors typically implies starting from scratch, which leads many students to abandon higher education. Shortening bachelor’s programs (which last five or six years) and connecting them with the labor market might raise effort and graduation rates as well.

Finally, there might be an additional reason why free college fails to elicit large effort changes: particularly for low-income students, free college might not be enough. For them, the effort necessary to complete college might require not only free tuition but also an additional, generous stipend for living expenses. In countries with limited fiscal resources, providing this additional stipend might require lowering the existing college subsidies for affluent students—a redistribution that, while politically costly, would nonetheless enhance equity and efficiency.

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