The federal government's role in supporting higher education touches nearly every aspect of the work performed by American colleges and universities. Federal authorities control an immense amount of public resources that are used to strategically exert influence across a complex and differentiated postsecondary system. This report is intended to…

This First Look report presents selected findings about student financial aid during the 2015-16 academic year. These findings are based on data from the 2015-16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:16), a nationally representative sample survey of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled any time between July 1, 2015, and June 30,…

The 2017-18 "Counselors and Mentors Handbook on Federal Student Aid" provides useful information to help high school counselors, TRIO and Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) staff, and other mentors advise students about financial aid for postsecondary education. This book focuses on the federal…

This report provides a detailed look at the sources and distribution of grants, loans, and other student aid for the most recent academic year and how this funding has changed over time. The federal government provided two-thirds of all student aid in 2016-17, but only one-third of the grant aid. In the context of uncertainty about the timing of…

This strategic action plan highlights policy and funding recommendations to make significant progress toward Washington's educational attainment goals. To meet those goals, adults ages 25-44 in Washington will hold a high school diploma, and at least 70 percent will have a postsecondary credential. Significant progress will require systemic…

This study examined the impact of participation and non-participation in a federal work-study (FWS) program on student persistence and accrued student debt for undergraduate students enrolled in a small, public, four-year, liberal arts college in the South. Sanford's (1967) theory of Challenge and Support and Tinto's (1986) Integration Model were…

Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50 years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic success and degree or certificate completion--has not kept pace. Student success, moreover, generally correlates with students' financial resources: Students from high-income families attend and complete college at…

A quality education is the primary instrument of social and economic mobility in the United States. As open-access institutions, community colleges are the gateway to postsecondary education for millions of Americans. Many of these students would be unable to afford college without federal resources, such as student financial aid and tax credits.…

This report builds on the 2013 and 2014 Reports on Unmet Need and Student Success at Maryland Public Four-Year Institutions by providing data on six-year graduation rates for the students in the original 2008 entering cohort. For this report, both descriptive analysis and logistic regression were used to understand the relationship between…

Data on student aid for 2015-16 confirm that the dramatic increases in aid awarded in 2009-10 and 2010-11 were products of extreme economic circumstances, not harbingers of long-run changes in financing for postsecondary education. Both total federal education loans and federal loans per full-time equivalent (FTE) student declined for the fifth…

This report provides data regarding state-funded expenditures for student financial aid and illustrates the extent of efforts made by the states to assist postsecondary students. Information in this report is based on academic year 2012-13 data from the 44th Annual NASSGAP survey. Highlights include: (1) In the 2012-13 academic year, the states…

The federal government plays an indispensable role in helping community college students pay for their education. It is hard to imagine today's community college campuses without needs-based federal student aid, such as the Pell Grant program and subsidized loans. There are, however, significant differences between community college students and…

Aware that rising costs could force some community colleges to compromise their long-standing open-door policies, administrators have put in place programs and incentives to offset the higher price of the average community college education. This article features ideas and programs to help struggling community colleges cope with rising costs such…

A college degree is often the key to jumpstarting a career. And data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consistently show that workers who have a college degree earn more than workers who don't. Not surprisingly, a college education is increasingly popular. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for…

Using event history modeling, this study explored to what extent loans, grants, institutional aid, and work-study affect timing to first departure for Latino college students. The goal is to understand more about how aid promotes or perturbs success for Latino students as well as how those effects vary over time. Federal grants and targeted loans…