The paper presents a counterfactual analysis employing two different matching techniques: Genetic matching and Coarsened Exact Matching. These two techniques are adopted in order to investigate whether the Italian University grants have an effect on preventing students dropout and on the degree completion. Two forms of incentives are considered: merit-based and need-based financial aids. The data consist of 1322 students enrolled in chemistry, physics and mathematics at the University of Trieste, from the academic years 2002/03 to 2010/11. The results obtained with Genetic matching suggest that the financial aids have significant effect on graduation time, and positive impact in preventing dropout at 2nd year, only for students from low income families; while the Coarsened exact matching shows that the merit-based scholarships increase the probability to achieve the degree in the time alloted.
