People who finish something
Tennessee's college-going rate rose by nearly six percentage points when its community colleges went free, and the students who came were more than twice as likely to leave with a credential as other school leavers.
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Value
The stream is what a qualification does to the rest of a person's life: the jobs it opens, the wages attached to them, and the chance to go further. This site places life chances a class above ordinary money, because what changes is the range of lives available rather than the size of a bank balance. Later earnings are the measuring rod because they are the only thing anyone has followed for long enough, but they are the measurement and not the good. Read as ordinary money at the middle of the scale, this argument would be a third smaller. Nothing is counted here for the students who would have enrolled anyway and now pay nothing, which is money and appears as its own argument. The value is a class above money because the stream is the range of lives available to a school leaver, with later earnings standing in as the long measurement.
Impact
About 3.4 million Americans leave school each year, and if states holding seventy percent of them take part, 2.4 million are covered. Tennessee's college-going rate rose from 58.64 to 64.4 percent in the first year of its programme, which is 5.8 percentage points, or about 138,000 additional entrants a year at national scale [4]. Not all of that is new study: some of it is students who would have started at a four-year college and go to a community college instead, which is booked against this measure in its own argument. Sixty percent is treated as genuinely additional, in a range from 40 to 90 percent, leaving about 83,000. Community college completion within six years runs near 35 percent, giving roughly 29,000 additional credentials a year. What one is worth over a working life is put at 120,000 euro, in a range from 50,000 to 250,000: the gap between a two-year credential and a school leaving certificate is real and it is not the gap a bachelor's degree opens. Weighting by where these families sit gives 1.4. The Impact is the second largest here, and the number that carries it is how much of Tennessee's enrolment jump was new study rather than moved study.
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| School leavers in participating states [6] | 3.4 million a year, 70 percent of them covered | 2.38 million a year | |
| × | Rise in the share going on to study Tennessee's college-going rate rose from 58.6 to 64.4 percent in the first year of its programme [4] | 5.8 percentage points | 138,000 additional entrants a year |
| × | Share that is new study rather than moved study Setting, range 40 to 90 percent: the rest would have started at a four-year college and is booked against this measure separately | 60 % | 82,800 entrants a year |
| × | Share who leave with a credential community college completion within six years [3] | 35 % | 28,980 credentials a year |
| × | Lifetime value of a credential Setting, range 50,000 to 250,000 euro: the gap over a school leaving certificate, which is not the gap a bachelor's degree opens | 120,000 euro each | 3.48 billion euro a cohort |
| × | Weight of a euro in these families community college students are concentrated below the middle of the income distribution | 1.4 | 4.87 billion euro a year |
| ÷ | Normalised Impact scale of this evaluation | 1 billion euro a point | 4.87 |
Plausibility
The counterfactual is Tennessee before its programme and the states around it, which is what the comptroller's evaluation and the published studies of promise programmes use. The design is quasi-experimental: an announced statewide policy with a sharp start date, compared against neighbouring states and against Tennessee's own trend, which is weaker than a lottery and stronger than a cross-section. Kalamazoo's programme, which was allocated by residence rather than by choice, gives the same direction with a cleaner comparison — credential attainment 9 to 12 percentage points higher at six years [5]. The confounder that matters is that Tennessee's programme arrived with a mandatory application, an adviser and a community service requirement, so what is measured is a package rather than a price; a federal programme that waived tuition without the rest would not reproduce it. That is named and unresolved. Reverse causation does not arise from a legislated start date. The Plausibility is at the middle to upper part: the enrolment response is well measured in two states, and what produced it may be the advising rather than the money.
Counterfactual: Tennessee before the programme and neighbouring states over the same years; Kalamazoo residents against non-residents. Design: quasi-experimental — announced statewide policy with a sharp start date, plus a residence-based comparison in Kalamazoo [4][5]. Confounder: Tennessee's programme bundled free tuition with a mandatory application, an adviser and community service, so the package rather than the price may carry the effect; named and unresolved. Direction: reverse causation does not arise from a legislated start date. Ceiling: quasi-experimental 8.0 less one point because what is transferred is a package, not the price alone.