ABSTRACT As tuition-free college policies spread rapidly across the states, an increasingly important policy debate has emerged regarding the optimal policy design of tuition-free college. However, existing scholarly evidence has focused almost exclusively on student outcomes, leaving the political decision-making processes among the public and policymakers unexamined. In this article, I leverage a nationally representative survey experiment and policy design theory to explore the power of social constructions of target populations in shaping a cornerstone of politically feasible tuition-free college—public opinion. In line with theoretical expectations, the analysis reveals that including a minimum high school GPA requirement increased support for tuition-free college, while targeting benefits to low-income families reduced perceptions of fairness, relative to a universal policy design. The findings also reveal that the effect of policy design on public perceptions of tuition-free college is moderated by region and age. Together, these findings reveal how a nationally representative sample of the public view the key policy design debates on tuition-free college and demonstrate the importance of social constructions of target populations for the study of higher education policy processes.

中文翻译：

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设计免学费大学的政治：社会建构的目标人群如何影响政策支持

摘要 随着免学费大学政策在各州迅速传播，关于免学费大学的最优政策设计的政策辩论越来越重要。然而，现有的学术证据几乎完全集中在学生的学习成果上，公众和政策制定者之间的政治决策过程没有受到审查。在本文中，我利用具有全国代表性的调查实验和政策设计理论，探讨目标人群的社会建构在塑造政治上可行的免学费大学的基石——舆论方面的力量。与理论预期一致，分析表明，包括最低高中 GPA 要求，增加了对免学费大学的支持，与普遍的政策设计相比，将福利瞄准低收入家庭减少了对公平的看法。研究结果还表明，政策设计对公众对免学费大学的看法的影响受地区和年龄的影响。总之，这些发现揭示了具有全国代表性的公众样本如何看待关于免学费大学的关键政策设计辩论，并证明了目标人群的社会建构对高等教育政策过程研究的重要性。