Deregulation of for-profit colleges led to a precipitous rise in enrollments from 1990 to 2010. Since 2010, regulation, investigations, and sanctions have led to enrollment declines in for-profit postsecondary institutions. Initially barred from receiving Title IV federal funds, in the form of Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, for-profit colleges…

The federal student aid system has emerged as the primary source of funding for students pursuing a wide range of subbaccalaureate credentials. But the eligibility rules for federal student aid, offered under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, require a minimum program length of 600 hours for Pell grants, despite little evidence showing that…

Objective: The purpose of our study was to identify the factors associated with federal loan default among a nationally-representative sample of community college students. The guiding research question was: For community college students who borrow federal loans, to what extent do demographic, academic, and enrollment characteristics relate to…

Objective: Increasing rural community college degree attainment is very important to foster rural areas' economic and social well-being. Rural community colleges differ greatly from their suburban and urban counterparts in financial aid patterns and student bodies. However, existing literature is vacant with respect to student financial aid and…

More community college students are taking out loans than ever before and their median debt levels are increasing. This trend is disconcerting because community college borrowers are overrepresented among loan defaulters and those who dropout without having earned a degree. While not without criticism, a growing number of community colleges are…

The U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is the nation's preeminent source of information on how students and their families pay for college. This paper explores how NCES can leverage linkages to federal and non-federal data sources to improve…

The 2015 Federal Student Aid Supplement (FSA Supplement), directed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the U.S. Department of Education (ED), is a collection of federal student loan data intended to augment the 1996/01 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:96/01) and the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary…

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…

Student parents face many challenges, including paying for child care, that can make it difficult for them to complete a degree. The federal government supports student parents through Education's Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program, which provides colleges funding for child care services, and federal student aid, which can…

This "First Look" report presents selected findings about the repayment of federal student loans using data from the 2015 Federal Student Aid Supplements to two Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Studies (BPS) administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The report examines two cohorts of borrowers:…

Completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the first and most important step for students to receive their portion of the billions of grant aid dollars disbursed in federal student financial aid; however, every year many low income and community college students fail to complete the FAFSA. Over the past twenty years,…

Student employment subsidies are one of the largest types of federal employment subsidies, and one of the oldest forms of student aid. Yet it is unclear whether they help or harm students' long term outcomes. We present a framework that decomposes overall effects into a weighted average of effects for marginal and inframarginal workers. We then…

While the effects of the shift from need- to merit-based grants on student enrollment and receipt of aid have been examined thoroughly by a number of analysts, very few recent reports have examined the effects of these grants on students' persistence towards completing bachelor's degrees. To examine this issue, this report explores the linkages…