On July 23 and 24, 2026, MIT Blueprint Labs hosted the International Perspectives on Higher Education Conference. The event was sponsored by the Ardian Foundation and organized in collaboration with IPP. The event brought together researchers from the US and France with leaders from higher education organizations.
Why Look Across Borders
Students in the US and France face similar questions about college. Should they attend? Where should they apply? Can they afford it? However, the two countries run their college admissions processes very differently. France runs a centralized admissions platform that collects students’ ranked preferences and assigns nearly every student to a program. In the US, no central assignment exists, as each college sets its own admissions bar and makes an aid offer.
For policymakers and practitioners, comparing the two systems helps identify challenges and opportunities within each design. Blueprint Labs convened the International Perspectives on Higher Education Conference to examine similarities and differences between the two countries’ higher education systems.
Over two days, researchers who study admissions, program choice, and financial aid in the US and France met with leaders from organizations with a stake in the process. Together, they surfaced findings on the biggest problems students face in both settings.
Gustave Kenedi from CY Cergy Paris University presented on older classmates’ influence on program choice.
What the Evidence Shows
Students act on what the people around them know. Nagui Bechichi (Paris School of Economics) and Gustave Kenedi (CY Cergy Paris University) found that French students are more likely to apply to and enroll in a degree program when an older schoolmate went there the year before. Teachers help drive this effect by passing on what they learn from one cohort’s choices to future students. High-achieving low-income students are less likely to have an older schoolmate who attended a prestigious program. The authors estimate that equalizing this exposure would close about 10% of the application gap to top-ranked degree programs between high-achieving low- and high-income students.
Distance is also a barrier for students. Julia Turner (Northwestern University) showed that letting Washington state community colleges award bachelor’s degrees affected degree completion for students across the state. Similarly, Anaïs Fabre (Cornell University) found that France’s higher education programs are spread unevenly and that students are highly sensitive to how far a program is from home.
Anaïs Fabre from Cornell University presented on spatial inequalities in the French higher education system.
Presenters also focused on the impact of grant aid and scholarships in the US. Blueprint Labs Director Joshua Angrist presented work from a randomized trial evaluating financial aid in Nebraska. This study shows that generous grant aid reduced student borrowing and raised bachelor’s degree completion. However, graduates’ earnings have not risen as much as the additional years of schooling would predict.
Michigan’s HAIL scholarship guaranteed qualified students four years of free tuition at the University of Michigan if admitted, and the offer arrived before students applied. In her keynote, Sue Dynarski (Harvard Graduate School of Education) showed that this scholarship moved high-achieving, low-income students from less selective colleges into the University of Michigan.
A team led by Jack Mountjoy (University of Chicago) examined the impact of Scholarship America’s awards on aid receipt and found that about a third of each additional private scholarship dollar is displaced by reductions in other aid. Lower-income students see the most displacement since they generally receive the largest aid packages.
Insights from the Field
Blueprint Executive Director Eryn Heying moderated a policy panel with Mike Nylund (Scholarship America), Jenny Rickard (Common App), and Jaclyn Piñero (uAspire). All three organizations meet students when they are making consequential decisions about college with incomplete information, and each has turned to research to better understand their situation.
Nylund called the chance to work with researchers a gift, since Scholarship America lacks the in-house capacity to run rigorous studies. After finding that their applicant pool is less diverse than Common App’s, Scholarship America and Common App now match their records so that users can see which awards they qualify for.
The panel returned repeatedly to timing and transparency. Students generally apply to college in the fall and are admitted to college well before learning the true cost of attendance. This weighs the heaviest on families who need to know the cost before deciding whether an application is worth the time and fees. Piñero argued that admission and aid offers should arrive together so that families can weigh academic and financial fit together.
The policy panel. From left to right: Jaclyn Piñero, Jenny Rickard, Mike Nylund, and Eryn Heying.
What Comes Next
Across two days, the same patterns surfaced from research in both countries. Students commit to a post-secondary pathway without full information. Closing the information gap will require more evidence on what happens after students apply. The conference gave researchers and practitioners a shared starting point, and the partnerships it fostered will determine where the work goes next.