Nationally, Ithaka S+R estimates that over six million students have completed credits at postsecondary institutions that they cannot document due to a past due balance. These overdue balances contribute to a national problem of stranded credits--credits that students have completed but cannot document because they were unable to fulfill their…

California's public higher education system has catapulted the state into global leadership such that, the state is the 5th largest economy in the world today. A bachelor's degree, in particular, provides unrivaled economic and health benefits for the individual earning the degree and for the state. To better understand how California's public…

Since 1997, education tax benefits have become an increasingly important component of federal higher education policy. For 2023, 11 higher education-related tax benefits are available. After 2025, absent legislative action, this number will effectively increase to 13. Two provisions that are temporarily suspended are scheduled to be…

In recent decades, there has been a revival of free tuition policies around the world. The goals of these policies are typically to increase access to and success in higher education. Although research on free tuition policies is growing, it is mainly focused on providing empirical evidence of its effects on student outcomes in the U.S. context.…

New York State (NYS) launched the Excelsior Scholarship in 2017. It is designed to make college tuition-free for students who attend publicly funded institutions and meet certain criteria. Is this scholarship a good investment for taxpayers of NYS? How long does it take taxpayers to recover their investment? This case analysis takes a perspective…

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the universities of the former Soviet states faced a lack of public funding that left them with tuition fees as their main--and sometimes only--source of revenue. In a context where universities were exclusively focused on their economic survival, the decision of Ilia State University (ISU) to introduce in…

Arizona has been on the leading edge of the school choice movement. The Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program was authorized in 2011. Initially, the program allowed parents of students with disabilities to receive 90% of what the state would have spent to educate the child in the public school system. The funds could then be used…

Public colleges and universities are a key driver of social and economic mobility, yet they also face increasingly challenging financial and political environments. In this essay, I discuss four key areas in which state higher education policy can influence student success and equity: the amount of funding provided, funding allocation mechanisms,…

There is no question that students who experience homelessness, like all students, are entitled to be educated. A federal law, known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, requires states to provide homeless children and youth with the same access to free appropriate public education as is available to other students. The Act also requires…

Pell eligibility for incarcerated people is a great rehabilitative opportunity, but several challenges remain. This article recaps five of the issues identified by the original research articles in this special issue. It also considers how solutions proposed in these studies may be beneficial across a variety of these issues and gathers…

The objective of this study of student-consumers in higher education is to investigate the direct influence of student choice factors on student expectations. The mediating role of perceptions of employability in the relationship between costs of study (fees) and student satisfaction, and the outcome variable of students' recommendations, is…

The 2019 "Education Next" Poll found 60% of Americans endorse the idea of making public four-year colleges free, and 69% want free public two-year colleges. There are also critics of free college schemes. They include some families who had to scrimp and save for their children to earn degrees. The "New England Journal of Higher…

We analyse Germany's re-introductions of tuition fees and enrolment of international students. Fees could not be levied before the German Federal Constitutional Court sanctioned them in 2005 and only seven out of the sixteen states took action, thus making a quasi-experimental research design available. Our fixed effects and synthetic control…

Advocates of tuition-free four-year public college make the argument for it too easy by asserting that it would be paid for out of taxes on the wealthy. Other uses of the revenues are possible. In this paper, Harry Brighouse and Kailey Mullane establish two criteria for comparing different uses of the revenues: the first criterion is, will the…

This qualitative research is aimed at studying how Universidad Mayor and Universidad de Santiago address inclusion, equity, and diversity in the processes of access and continued studies of economically and socially disadvantaged students who benefited from the Free Tuition State Policy and how these processes are perceived by this type of…