A prominent concern is that college students are harming their long-term economic prospects by making student loan decisions without full information about the implications of their choices. We designed an experiment to examine students' responses to a debt letter, an increasingly popular strategy to provide easily accessible information about…

There is a wealth of literature on the integration of university students increasing retention and ultimate completion, yet much less is known about the connections or disconnections that exist for community college students. Therefore, I interviewed financially eligible Pell Grant community college students (n = 62) about their connections to…

The first two years of the Obama administration brought nothing but good news for student financial aid programs. These included increases to grants, tax benefits, and funding for community colleges and minority-serving schools. But in early 2011, President Obama and Congress released the new budget with a request that would achieve large savings…

There is a dearth of empirical work that examines the relationships between federal financial aid policy and institutional financial aid priorities and expenditures. This study uses Resource Dependency Theory to explore whether changes the amount of financial aid awarded by colleges and universities during the last fifty years are best explained…

Escalating poverty rates and economic instability are creating intensifying pressures for higher education. Historically, the U.S. has relied on higher education, in particular community colleges, to help solve both problems by providing educational opportunities to thousands of individuals who would have not been able to go to college and by…

This qualitative study explores how low-income, first-generation, White students experienced their social class during college. Particular attention was given to how students' spent their time, energy, and resources during college. Overall, participants' stories reflected students who felt overextended and overwhelmed during college mostly due to…

Poverty in the US is growing at an alarming rate. The current economic climate demands higher education to embrace the economic diversity of all students and to prepare them, regardless of economic class, for a globally competitive workplace. Unfortunately, the higher education community is not as adept at serving low-income students, as it is…

For more than a decade, college prices have been rising consistently and have continued to rise at a gradual pace after the Stafford loan limit increases were enacted in 2008 and 2009. However, it is difficult to determine if a direct relationship exists between increases in college prices and the Stafford loan limit increases because of the…

This Statistics in Brief examines three cohorts of recent college graduates 1 year after they attained their bachelor's degree. The graduation years for the three cohorts span a 15-year period: 1992-93, 1999-2000, and 2007-08. The latest cohort (2007-08) graduated in the midst of the 2008 recession. This Statistics in Brief first examines how…

The Academic Competitiveness (AC) and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grants were established by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The grants provide merit-based financial aid to certain low-income college students eligible for Federal Pell Grants and are administered by the Department of Education (Education).…

In 2007, Michigan undertook a bold mission: to retrain tens of thousands of adults to qualify for jobs in emerging and expanding sectors of the economy. The state's proposal to jobless, dislocated, and low-income residents was simple but appealing: enroll in up to two years of postsecondary education, and Michigan would cover up to $5,000 in…

For several decades, education has assumed a vital role in this country's economic, social, and political development, catapulting less advantaged citizens into higher social classes and the political process. A testament to education's fundamental importance in our society are the numerous programs designed during the 1960s to eliminate the…