In recent decades, several dozen colleges and universities have instituted loan-reduction initiatives (LRIs), such as “no-loan” programs. Institutions frequently cast such initiatives as efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity on campus. Using a difference-in-differences analytic strategy with national institution-level data, we examine the effect of LRI adoption at 54 institutions on three sets of outcomes: student borrowing, admission metrics, and campus diversity. Our analysis suggests LRIs decreased institution-level borrowing rates at private institutions, with no detected change at public institutions. Consistent with stated program goals, LRI adoption increased the number of Pell Grant recipients at both public and private institutions. However, adopting LRIs at public institutions reduced racial/ethnic diversity, suggesting possible trade-offs for LRI adoption in terms of student body diversity.

近几十年来，数十所高校已经制定了贷款减少计划 (LRI)，例如“无贷款”计划。机构经常将此类举措视为增加校园社会经济多样性的努力。我们使用国家机构级数据的差异分析策略，研究了 54 所机构采用 LRI 对三组结果的影响：学生借贷、录取指标和校园多样性。我们的分析表明，LRI 降低了私营机构的机构级借贷利率，而公共机构没有发现任何变化。与既定的计划目标一致，LRI 的采用增加了公共和私人机构的佩尔助学金获得者的数量。然而，在公共机构采用 LRI 会减少种族/民族多样性，