Does Free College for Foster Youth Increase Educational Attainment? Evidence from Pennsylvania's Fostering Independence Tuition Waiver

Abstract

Foster youth face substantial barriers to higher education, including housing instability, financial constraints, and lack of family support. This paper provides descriptive evidence on Pennsylvania's Fostering Independence Tuition Waiver (FosterED), which provides full tuition waivers to former foster youth at state colleges. Using a difference-in-differences design comparing Pennsylvania to neighboring states before and after the 2019 policy implementation, we document small positive point estimates for college enrollment (+0.20 percentage points) and any college attainment (+0.89 percentage points) among the general young adult population, though these estimates are not statistically distinguishable from zero given inferential challenges with few state-level clusters. These modest point estimates likely reflect substantial dilution from an intent-to-treat design, as foster youth comprise less than one percent of the sample. Heterogeneity analysis suggests slightly larger point estimates among older young adults (ages 22-26). We discuss the fundamental limitations of population-level surveys and difference-in-differences designs with few clusters for evaluating targeted interventions, and highlight the need for linked administrative data to credibly estimate the program's causal effect on the intended beneficiaries. \bigskip Keywords: Foster care, higher education, tuition waivers, difference-in-differences, educational attainment \bigskip JEL Codes: I22, I23, I38, J13