College cost and time to complete a degree: Evidence from tuition discontinuity

University tuition typically remains constant throughout years of enroll- ment while delayed degree completion is an increasing problem for many academic institutions around the world. Theory suggests that if contin- uation tuition were raised the probability of late graduation would be reduced. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design on data from Bocconi University in Italy, we show that an increase of 1,000 euro in continua- tion tuition reduces the probability of late graduation by 5.2 percentage points with respect to a benchmark average probability of 80%. We also show that this decline in the probability of late graduation is not associ- ated with an increase in the dropout rate or with a fall in the quality of students’ performance as measured by the final graduation mark.