Free tuition and college enrollment: evidence from New York's Excelsior program

Since the fall of 2017, New York has offered free tuition to eligible residents attending its state-funded two-year and four-year colleges under its unique Excelsior Scholarship program. We use the difference-in-differences and generalized synthetic control estimators to document that institution-level enrollment effects are negligible. Our study provides the first evidence of enrollment responses to a state-wide promise program within the four-year sector and adds new results to the fast-growing free-college literature. We propose competing channels to rationalize the obtained findings and compare Excelsior with other prominent initiatives to shed light on both design and implementation.