As China moved from elite to mass higher education, student borrowers as the product of state intervention have surged. Yet little attention has been paid to their voices. This study conducts reflexive thematic analysis with a qualitative inquiry into lived experiences of 41 current borrowers. A five-factor typology of debt attitudes yields a…

This research brief uses publicly available data from the 2016/2017 Baccalaureate and Beyond survey to examine individual and institutional predictors of participation in paid and unpaid internships, especially family income. When controlling for other factors, results showed that low-income students were more likely to have unpaid internships…

Parent PLUS loans are a growing concern due to their limited income-driven repayment protections and their potential to maintain longstanding racial wealth gaps. Previous research has examined factors associated with student debt burdens of college graduates, but no research has examined factors related to parent borrowing for college. In this…

This empirical study uses the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to investigate the characteristics of households that hold at least one loan for educational expenses. The benefit of using household-level data is that a single household may have education loans for multiple people in the household, including the household head, spouse/partner,…

Students with a zero expected family contribution (EFC) are those with the greatest financial need and least ability to pay for college and now make up more than one in three American undergraduate students. Yet little is known about the year-to-year financial aid volatility of these students, or whether it varies by how the zero EFC was…

In this paper, we leverage detailed, individual-level student data to understand the relationships between family finances, merit-based aid, and first-year student retention. With three cohorts of student data that comprise family financial status, institutional merit scholarships, and many of the other known correlates of student retention, we…

This article uses data from the 2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study to provide insight about the range of tuition discounting practices at public institutions. Specifically, it examines the characteristics of students who receive tuition discounts from public four-year colleges and universities. A binary logistic regression is applied to…

Recent studies have questioned the wisdom in blaming college costs for the escalation of student loans. It would appear that less affluent students borrow large amounts because inexpensive subsidized loans are available. This study attempted to verify the claim, estimating a model of the amount of loan received by students as a function of net…

This article describes higher education financial assistance tools designed mainly for students of middle- and upper-income families who may not be eligible for financial aid from other sources. It includes the 2007 legislative updates for these tools, all of which have been devised and offered by either state or federal governments. The authors…

Federal higher education policy has shifted over the past few decades from grants to loans as the primary means for providing access to postsecondary education for low- and moderate-income families. With this shift, policy makers have begun tracking student loan default rates as a key indicator of the efficacy of student loan programs. This effort…

A comparison of 1973 gross income reported on the Parents' Confidential Statement (PCS) and the Basic Grant Student Eligibility Report (SER) of students at State University College at Fredonia, New York, revealed patterns of both overestimating and underestimating reported income. Implications for income verification and for application timetables…

Reports a study comparing information from federal income tax returns with that on the Parents' Confidential Statement for student financial aid applications at California State University, Long Beach. Results correspond with those of a similar national study: Although the majority of parents provide accurate information, verifying data is still…

Various efforts of the University of California at San Diego to systematize and develop useful evaluation formulas for verifying income through use of Federal Income Tax Returns are reviewed. It is recommended that 100 percent collection and analysis of tax returns by the national scholarship services would maximize economy and confidentiality.…

A Michigan Competitive Scholarship and Tuition Grant Program survey of 1973-74 participants who also reported receiving Social Security Educational Benefits (SSEB) shows that reported educational utilization of SSEB is significantly higher than that expected by program assessment procedures. Implications for needs analysis theory and practice are…

Families need assistance in planning for the costs of higher education. Some suggestions are offered, including question the premise that parents will finance one year's education out of one year's income; create a national college savings plan, etc. (MLW)