Another Skeptical Study Of Incentive Pay For College Completion

State Higher Education Performance Funding for Community Colleges: Diverse Effects and Policy Implications
by David A. Tandberg, Nicholas Hillman & Mohamed Barakat
Performance-based funding programs have become a popular state policy strategy for increasing college completions, among other things. This study asks, To what extent does the introduction of performance funding programs impact two-year degree completion among participating states? Using a difference-in-differences technique, we find that the program had no effect on average and mixed results for the individual states. We conclude that the policy is not a “silver bullet” for improving community college completions.