Imagine students attending colleges and universities around the country having their financial needs met without the use of federal loans, Pell Grants, and higher education tax credits. In "Starting from Scratch: A New Federal and State Partnership in Higher Education," New America's Higher Education Policy Program shares its vision for…

Rising college costs are of increasing concern. At the 12 public universities in Illinois, average increases in tuition were modest, generally in the 4% range, until 1999 when individual campuses begin to increase tuition at double digit rates. In 2002-2003, the overall average increase in tuition/fees more than doubled at 13.79%. In an effort to…

The question of how the government can best support access to postsecondary education has become a critical issue for education policymakers around the globe, as the practice of cost sharing for funding postsecondary education has been more widely adopted. In this context, this study explores the approaches to implementing current need-based…

A review of net price calculators--a financial aid tool mandated by the "Higher Education Opportunity Act" of 2008--reveals that students from low-, moderate-, and middle-income families face record-level net prices at 4-year public colleges today. These net prices will translate into levels of average total loan burden far in excess of…

China has made huge strides in expanding access to higher education since the 1980s. The main approach to achieve mass higher education was cost-sharing reforms of tertiary education. This article examines the policy reforms that affected tuition, fees and subsidies for tertiary students since the end of the 1980s and looks at the effects in terms…

When President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act into law in 2002, the U.S. national high school graduation rate was 72.6 percent. Today, the national high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high of 81 percent and the number of low-graduation-rate high schools has declined considerably. While this progress is notable,…

The primary purpose of government provided student financial aid is to increase college access by bringing the out-of-pocket price of attendance within reach of more students. The basic idea is quite straightforward. If a good or service costs $100 to buy and the government gives consumers a $50 subsidy, then consumers need only spend $50 of their…

As more countries are planning to inaugurate or enlarge student loan schemes, much of the debate is over the question of the optimal form of the repayment obligation: specifically, whether it should be according to a fixed schedule of payments or a percentage of earnings or income. This paper argues that the current fascination with income…

Paying for college is a challenge for many Americans and navigating the financial aid process can be very difficult, especially for low-income and first-generation college students. The College Board commissioned research to learn more about students' and parents' knowledge, beliefs and attitudes about the importance of a college education and how…

Policy-makers and institutional administrators have long struggled with the question of college and university student tuition fees. In many ways this struggle may be characterized as a negotiation between two distinct policy goals: providing revenue to adequately finance higher education and ensuring student accessibility to higher education. The…

This paper is concerned with the influence of student loans on the accessibility of disadvantaged groups to higher education. Three key conditions are necessary for success, but are often neglected. These are: that effective eligibility and screening criteria are in place and that pro-active targeting measures are employed to reach out to the most…

Failure to achieve equitable access to university studies has contributed to turning the focus to the funding of higher education systems. This paper aims to review critically the literature assessing the effectiveness of existing financing schemes and changes in them as a means for reducing the prevalent under-representation of students from a…

Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education. The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. This report identifies the main culprit for this…

It is a difficult time for policymakers, business leaders, and education leaders to think about ways to increase the numbers of students graduating from high school prepared for college and the work force when their focus is on reducing budgets. But now is the best time to plan for the future. Now is the time to explore programs that may bear…

Historically, the primary role of financial aid was to increase educational opportunities for those with inadequate resources, yet more recently institutional aid is increasingly becoming based on criteria unrelated to financial need. Various political forces have reinforced the institutional tendency to redirect dollars from the mission of…