People who are impacted by the criminal justice system ("system-impacted") face barriers when seeking financial aid to pay for college. Between the late 1960s and the early 2000s, Congress created laws that prohibited incarcerated students and students with certain criminal convictions from receiving federal grants and loans. This paper…

This article compares state expenditure data to see how the operating budgets of public community colleges specifically, and public higher education institutions generally, have fared over the past 30 years. Data from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) have long tracked major state expenditure categories, including the…

Support for postsecondary correctional education expands and contracts with the dominant political ideology of the times, reflecting the degree of punitiveness in response to crime and criminals. Despite a growing literature demonstrating the efficacy of college education on reducing recidivism and increasing wages and employment, correctional…

For nearly 50 years, the cost of higher education has risen faster than the pace of inflation, with federal student aid contributing to increasing tuition. In 1987, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett penned a "New York Times" article, "Our Greedy Colleges," in which he wrote, "If anything, increases in financial aid…

In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. The increasing size and complexity of the nation's student aid system has generated questions about…

This report discusses the current state of higher education, with a brief high-level overview of the market and a more detailed discussion and analysis of the financial aid system. It also discusses the important changes President Obama has made to make higher education more accessible and affordable. The key findings are: (1) The economic returns…

This document identifies and describes the sources of public support for postsecondary vocational training in the United States, including the mix of public assistance that is currently available to economically disadvantaged individuals. Following an introduction, the second section is an overview of the general financing situation. Tables report…

This book is designed as a guide to existing and proposed higher education tuition financing plans. The first chapter looks at recent patterns in higher education financing and participation noting the rapid increase in tuition and other college costs and the corresponding changes in participation patterns. Chapter 2 examines tuition prepayments,…

This analysis looks at proposals for the 1997 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. These proposals include graduation-contingent aid providing "incentives" for completion; creation of federal student aid block grants to reduce the federal government's role and provide states and institutions more flexibility in awarding student…

This report provides recent statistics on trends in student aid in the 1980s and 1990s for the federal government, state governments, and educational institutions. The analysis also reports on changes in the costs of attending college and in family incomes in order to provide a context for assessing whether college is becoming more or less…

This monograph presents a history of developments in major student financial aid programs over the past 20 years. An opening section offers highlights of the topic. The article goes on to look at types of student aid, categorized as grants, loans, and work study. An examination of the effects of inflation shows that even taking into account…

In order to encourage efforts to improve access to postsecondary education, this booklet offers data on students, enrollments, and financial aid. A highlights section opens the booklet. A section on the college student describes six actual students and discusses the diversity of the current student body in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, age,…

More than $25 billion in financial aid in 1988 is awarded annually to students attending postsecondary education. The aid covers about the same percentage of college costs that it did in 1970, but the impact of veterans' education benefits and social security benefits is no longer significant, and loans now make up one-half the total aid, having…

In response to Fischer (HE 527 626), the author considers his proposal to simplify need analysis in Pell grants and other federal need-based student aid as ignoring important considerations. It is suggested that a single formula will be difficult to derive until a coherent philosophy of needs analysis and specific current purpose for the grant…

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Jobs Initiative is a six-city workforce initiative aimed at helping disadvantaged adults earn their way out of poverty. Between 1995 and 2002, the initiative enrolled more than 17,000 adults and placed 8,090 people in jobs. Most Jobs Initiative participants were working 18 months after enrollment in the program, and…