Pay No Attention to the Regulation Behind the Curtain: The Implications of the Return to Title IV (R2T4) Federal Aid Policy on Time to Degree

Federal aid programs and their effect on student persistence, stopout, and completion have long been studied, but current literature does not fully capture the temporal nature of these programs due to insufficient methods, imprecise data, or both. Using event history methodologies, I leverage a unique level of access to data at a public four-year, research intensive university to explore how the Return to Title IV federal aid withdrawal policy, one of the most prominent yet understudied aspects of federal financial aid policies, influences time to degree. The treatment of this policy is associated with a 58.6% reduced risk (reduced conditional probability) of completing a bachelor’s degree at the home institution, and a 64.4% reduced risk of degree from any four-year university