The Moving Target: Student Financial Aid and Community College Student Retention

Abstract

This article reviews recent literature on student financial aid as a retention tool at community colleges. Enrollment and tuition data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and federal direct grant student aid data from the IPEDS Student Financial Aid Survey are used to analyze changes from 2000–01 to 2005–06. The new 2005 Carnegie Basic Classification of Associate's Colleges is used to reveal differences among rural, suburban, and urban community college types, and the Grapevine definition is used to reveal differences among states with local funding and those without significant local funding. A key finding is that the 40% increase in tuition and the 2.2 million new students enrolled in the past five years overwhelmed the very modest increases in federal direct grant student aid (Pell and Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants) over the same period, lessening the ability of student aid to positively impact retention at America's community colleges.