This case study examined how research has been used in the federal higher education rulemaking process, through which the U.S. Department of Education implements programs under the Higher Education Act. Findings indicate that in this high-conflict policymaking process, politics infuses various forms of research use to create several overlapping…

We used Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the racial discourse within recent attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Specifically, we interrogated congressional markup hearings to understand how members frame student debt and the racialized dynamics embedded within. Our findings highlight three types of discourse: "All…

This study examines policy discourse surrounding a policy process to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, the most significant federal policy concerning higher education, a decade following the previous reauthorization. Guided by the theory of social construction and policy design, we draw on data from 14 hours of deliberation in a congressional…

The last comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) occurred in 2008, and the law has been overdue for another reauthorization for nearly a decade. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) has worked on reauthorization for nearly a decade. In this report, NASFAA updates its recommendations to…

In a recent volume published by Harvard Education Press, "The Convergence of K-12 and Higher Education: Policies and Programs in a Changing Era" (see ED568824), Christopher Loss and Patrick McGuinn gathered a group of researchers to explore the "convergence" of US education policy fifty years after the passage of the Elementary…

This multiple-site case study of 24 intermediary organizations (IOs) engaged in postsecondary public policy examined how they identify policy issues and move issues, problems, and solutions onto the higher education policy agenda. Specifically, this study used agenda-setting theory to examine how IOs construct higher education policy issues,…

The original goal of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the amendments to that act in 1972, and reauthorizations through 1998 was to increase accessibility of higher education to all. Initially these system-level efforts substantially enhanced equity, but recent enrollment trends raise the question: Is our system becoming more or less equitable? By…

As college costs have increased, and more federal and state aid has become merit-based, the doors of educational opportunity have closed for many students. Countless numbers are being denied access to college simply because they cannot afford it, undermining the fundamental policy object of the Higher Education Act of 1965. On Capitol Hill,…

This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political…