The impact of developing Hispanic-serving institution program on college persistence, completion rates, and student debt

The Developing Hispanic-Serving Institution (DHSI) Program is one of the largest federal grant programs that support Hispanic-Serving Institutions. We employ an eleven-year panel dataset of U.S. higher education institutions to implement a difference-in-differences (DID) design, two-way fixed effect model (TWFE), and propensity score matching (PSM) to compare DHSI grantee institutions with other Title V eligible higher education institutions that did not receive DHSI funding. We find that the receipt of DHSI grant funding helps these institutions significantly improve their retention rates (2~ percentage points), completion rates (1-3 percentage points), and reduce their students’ debt level (e.g., $500~$1000 lower for graduated students). Our back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit calculation shows that the DHSI program benefits exceed cost.