On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
We study the impact of financial aid on upward mobility. An unprecedented financial aid reform in Colombia dramatically increased the enrollment of academically successful students of low socioeconomic status (SES) in high-quality universities. We leverage the policy’s stringent eligibility criteria and population-wide administrative microdata, using regression discontinuity (RD) and difference-in-difference (DD) methodologies to estimate causal effects on later-life educational and labor-market outcomes. The program notably boosted attendance of low-SES high-achievers at colleges with high value-added, increasing their returns to ability. Low-SES students are more likely to obtain bachelor’s degrees from these colleges, especially in STEM fields, and they achieve higher scores in the college graduation exam. Nine years later, their earnings are 18 log points higher, with a greater likelihood of being in the top 1%, reflecting increased upper-tail mobility. The policy successfully narrowed socioeconomic gaps in college quality, attainment, skill development, earnings, and the returns to ability.
