Can information and advising affect postsecondary participation and attainment for military personnel? Evidence from a large-scale experiment with the U.S. Army

Despite generous financial aid, military veterans have high rates of undermatch and generally poor postsecondary outcomes. We conducted a large-scale, multi-arm field experiment with the U.S. Army to investigate whether personalized information about postsecondary options and access to advising affects service members’ postsecondary choices and outcomes. We find no impact of the intervention on whether or where veterans enroll in college or on their college persistence. These results suggest that light touch strategies that have been effective at addressing similar challenges among traditional students, and which we modified for the military context, are not sufficient to improve veterans’ postsecondary outcomes.