Impact of state financial aid for students on university tuition prices: The case of the Ser Pilo Paga program in Colombia

Abstract

During the last decade in Latin America, the use of financing policies as mechanisms to support admission to higher education has spread. Thus, by the end of 2014, the Government of Colombia introduces the Ser Pilo Paga (SPP) subsidy program as a strategy to strengthen access for students with high academic performance in conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability. Most of the research reviewed on this program has focused on coverage, allocation, academic performance, and educational outreach. With the help of tuition price data reconstructed with pecuniary documentary records and parametric techniques and through a difference-in-differences methodology, its impact on tuition prices is approximated in a sample of 14 high-quality accredited institutions out of a total of 65 during the period from 2015 to 2018. The results provide evidence that the SPP program increased the tuition prices of the participating universities by an average of 2.3 to 4.3 percentage points.