1210	Assessment
Abstract	The abstract is clear and provides a good sense of the project.
Research Question	The research question is initially presented as three related questions.  Of those, the second and third are clear and consistent with the rest of the proposal (although the third could be better phrased), but the first is posed as a historical question that appears to be irrelevant to the research design.
Literature Review	The paper has a sound initial literature review.  To develop it further, try organizing more around the ideas rather than the authors, and in that context broaden the range of materials cited to provide a more effective portrait of the relevant scholarship.  In particular, see what more research exists on the causes and consequences of student debt.
Data	The data seem reasonable for the project, but the limitations of information available in the data, as mentioned in this draft, is somewhat worrying.  It is not obvious that this data will allow sufficient specification of the causal process and consideration of important possible influences to achieve resolution of the research question as intended.  If the data do not offer sufficient information, we will have no way of knowing if college debt is functioning as a causal influence, or if it is one more symptom (or effect) of the same causal conditions that guide the variation in post-graduate incomes.
Causal Interpretations	This seems to be a fairly clear causally oriented analysis.   It is seeking the effects of college debt.  This implies that we should see a fairly well-specified causal model, one that identifies what circumstances and influences need examination.  Such a model presumably would consider the determinants of college attendance, the determinants of borrowing for college, and the possible causal pathways through which debt may affect future income.  Where is this model? One possible conundrum -- Let's ask what people experience as the alternative to taking on debt.  Is it going to a cheaper school, foregoing college, making alternative financial arrangements (such as holding a job), or something else?  This matters, because, as the proposal begins to recognize in the brief reference to counterfactuals in the conclusion, assessing the impact of debt depends on comparing debtors to appropriate alternatives.  We can try to control for family income and a few other things, but, in a way, this makes the problem more evident.  Once we control for influences like income, we can think of ourselves as comparing people with college debt with others who have similar family income (and other characteristics) who did not acquire college debt.  At this point we are faced with the critical problem: what causal conditions distinguish those who borrow from those who do not, and are those conditions irrelevant to subsequent earnings.  Or, to put it differently, can we assume that after our controls, borrowing is a random event? Also, the proposal suggests that graduates with higher levels of debt have greater need for earnings to make loan payments, which would seem to imply that student loan indebtedness should be positively correlated with future employment earnings after controls for the reasons students acquire debt (because students with a lot of debt are more motivated to get a job, especially a well-paying job, that will allow them to pay off their debt). If the dataset has detailed information about post-graduation occupations, it could allow testing whether it is true both that students with debt are more likely to enter occupations that offer a decent starting salary, and that they yet have less potential for salary growth over time.
Research Value	The discussion of the proposed research's potential value, should pay more attention to the anticipated scholarly contribution.
Timetable	The timetable seems okay.
Citations & Biblio	The reference structure seems okay (but note the Hout reference is not in the bibliography).
Quality of writing	The writing is fine.
Priorities for Revising for Final Draft	Probably figuring out the data availability issues in conjunction with developing the causal model(s) is most crucial to this proposal.
Miscellaneous Notes