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How Does Undergraduate Debt Affect Graduate School Application and Enrollment?

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Abstract

This study estimates the short- and long-term effects of undergraduate educational debt on students' decisions to apply and to enroll in graduate school after completing requirements for a baccalaureate degree, using marginal mean weighting through stratification method (MMW-S) to analyze data from the National Center for Education Statistics Baccalaureate and Beyond 2008–2012 (B&B 08-12) survey. Although we find that historically and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups tend to accumulate higher levels of educational debt, our results indicate minimal effects of undergraduate debt on graduation school application and enrollment. We find no differences by race/ethnicity, family income, or status as a first-generation baccalaureate recipient in the effects of educational debt on graduate school application or enrollment.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association, which receives funds for its “AERA Grants Program” from the National Science Foundation under NSF Grant #DRL-0941014. Opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies. The authors are grateful for feedback on this work from Guanglei Hong (University of Chicago) and Nathan Harris (University of Rochester).

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  1. Department of Education Leadership, Management and Policy, Seton Hall University, Jubilee Hall, Room 421, South Orange, NJ, 07079, USA

    Rong Chen

  2. Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

    Peter Riley Bahr

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Chen, R., Bahr, P.R. How Does Undergraduate Debt Affect Graduate School Application and Enrollment?. Res High Educ 62, 528–555 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-020-09610-y

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