Support for higher education is a known and well-documented venue for financial transfers within families, but practices of family support beyond college are less understood. Drawing on interviews with recent master's degrees recipients who have student debt, I find key class differences in the process and forms of family financial assistance for…

Pursuing a college degree--and the open future for young adults it is believed to secure--anchors what it means to be middle class in the United States today. Acting on the conviction that the rising generation can and should do better than their parents is a middle-class inheritance, and getting young adults to and through college is at the heart…

Making college education more affordable is a central goal of the Obama Administration and has been a focus of Vice-President Biden's Taskforce on the Middle Class. To that end, the Task Force asked U.S. Treasury Department to prepare this report on how to make Section 529 college savings plans a more effective and reliable tool for families to…

While the price of a college education is rising, the vast majority of families with children in college do not face an appreciably higher burden relative to income than they did 5 years ago. The cost of college is compared with the income of families who have college age children. (MLW)

Many new loan and scholarship programs are available, most open to middle-income families. State loans and grants are increasingly attractive, aid packages are more likely to include merit scholarships and complex new financing arrangements offered by schools themselves. Families must learn to shop carefully for good, not gimmicky, aid. (MSE)

Examples of financial aid packages and family finanicial support strategies for low- and middle-income families are provided to illustrate the variety of approaches to financing higher education. The discussion is based on two recent American Council on Education reports. (MSE)

Higher education costs are borne by four parties: taxpayers, parents, students, and philanthropists. From a cost-sharing paradigm, a number of public policy instruments may be viewed as devices to apportion higher education's costs among their potential bearers. (MLW)

Hearings held before the Senate Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities on the Student Assistance Amendments of 1981 are presented, along with the text of S. 1108. A major objective of the bill is to amend Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to emphasize the element of need in the Guaranteed Student Loan (GSL) program and the…

The current system of financial aid is reviewed. It is noted that higher education is now more accessible to more people, but at a great cost in terms of both money and values, since the middle class is reluctant to make financial sacrifices for its children. Specific grant and loan programs are reported. (LBH)

As part of a series of field hearings across the nation on the reauthorization of the Higher Education of 1965, the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education met in Pleasant Hill, California, to hear testimony specifically on access to education for children of lower and middle class families in California. Discussed were the rising cost of higher…

As part of a series of field hearings across the nation on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education met in Great Falls, Montana, to hear testimony specifically on access to education for children of middle class farm families in Montana. In the course of the hearing witnesses touched on…