Brookings Institution | By Judith Scott-Clayton (Ph.D. '09), Associate Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University: "[D]iscussion has increasingly focused on whether free tuition is the most effective use of additional funds for higher education.
"Specifically, does the marginal dollar spent on higher education have a bigger impact on enrollment and completion if it is used to reduce the sticker prices students face, or instead to increase institutional expenditures that affect the experience they receive once they enroll? Just a few days after Cuomo’s announcement, David Deming (Ph.D. '10) of Harvard University and Christopher Walters of the University of California at Berkeley presented a new study at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, using a national database of state funding levels, tuition policies, institutional expenditures, and student outcomes over time to ask precisely this question."
