Increasingly, college students struggle to find translatable meaning in their college experiences. Following a program of study and dabbling in a few extra-curricular experiences proves to be enough to graduate, but somehow some students fail to thrive in all areas of well-being once they are at work. If this disconnect is rooted to a lack of…

In this paper, we explore how tutoring could become a permanent feature of the U.S. public education system. We outline a blueprint for taking tutoring to scale nationally and estimate its costs, while highlighting a range of design and implementation challenges. Our blueprint is centered on ten core principles and a federal architecture to…

Since 1964, the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program has provided funds to subsidize the wages of student employees, but it has never been studied directly. I use an instrumental variables difference-in-difference framework with administrative data from West Virginia to identify causal effects, comparing eligible and ineligible students across…

The three basic kinds of federal student financial aid to college students are described: federal student loans (direct lending, both subsidized and unsubsidized); campus-based aid (Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, work-study programs, and Perkins Loans); and Pell Grants. Some details of program design and recent changes are noted.…

This report examines best practices in the delivery of Student Support Services (SSS), one of the three Special Programs for Disadvantaged Students known as the TRIO programs. Data have shown that participation in student support services has a positive effect on student outcomes, but many participants do not receive enough services to receive…