Recent efforts to increase college access and completion concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policymakers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-term gains in college completion. In this paper, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes to study how community college tuition rates affect students' outcomes across both public and private colleges. By exploiting spatial variation in tuition rates, I find that reducing tuition at a student's local community college by $1,000 increases enrollment at the college by 3.5 percentage points (18%) and reduces enrollment at non-local community colleges, for-profit institutions, and other private, vocationally-focused colleges, by 1.9 percentage points (15%). This shift in enrollment choices increases students' persistence in college, credit completion, and the probability that they transfer to and earn bachelor's degrees from four-year colleges.

中文翻译：

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社区大学学费减少对大学选择和学位完成的影响

最近增加大学入学率和完成学业的努力集中在降低社区大学的学费，但是研究人员和政策制定者都表示担心，这种减少可能不会带来长期的大学学业成就。在本文中，我使用有关学生的大学入学率和结业成绩的详细数据来研究社区大学学费率如何影响公立和私立大学学生的学习成绩。通过利用学费率的空间变化，我发现将学生所在社区大学的学费降低1,000美元，可使该大学的入学率提高3.5个百分点（18％），并减少非本地社区大学，营利性机构和其他私立，以职业为重点的学院，下降了1.9个百分点（15％）。