College Affordability Research Articles

Defining Merit: The Impact of Award Structure on the Distribution of Merit Aid

The Kentucky Education Excellence Scholarship (KEES) is a merit-based scholarship program intended to increase college access, long-term academic commitment, and retention of top students within the state. KEES uses a heavily graduated award structure and both high school grade point average and standardized test scores to establish award amounts. Using school-level data, this study applied means tests, correlation, and multivariate analysis to examine the relationship between the demographic composition of high schools and the amount and number of KEES awards received. KEES was found to be regressive, and that regressivity is compounded by its graduated structure. Students from higher socioeconomic status schools, from schools with more Caucasian students, or from schools with more females received a higher proportion of KEES awards, in larger amounts, than those from other schools. The source of KEES funding was also found to be regressive: the more successful the program, the greater the strain on its static lottery revenue funding. Because awards are not indexed to inflation, their impact on college affordability diminishes as education costs rise. Recommended steps for addressing regressivity in the KEES program, including clearly defining the program’s primary goal and introducing a need-based component, are discussed.

A Comparison of College Affordability Indexes among City, Suburban, Town, and Rural Public Community Colleges

During the past 50 years, community colleges have increased in number and evolved to meet thechanging needs of an increasingly diverse student population. No other segment of postsecondaryeducation has been more responsive to the needs of its community (Kasper, 2002). Communitycolleges grant associate’s degrees normally requiring 2 years of full-time study for completion.Enrollment at public 4-year colleges and universities nearly doubled from 1965 to 1999, whileenrollments at public community colleges have increased approximately 5-fold (Kasper).

New Rules for Business in a Flat World: A Trustees Call to Action

As policymakers, community college trustees have a responsibility to help keep their communities strong. How they do this is by helping to give everyone a chance for higher education. Thomas Friedman says that John F. Kennedy's vision was to put a man on the moon. His vision is to put every American on a campus. To do this, trustees can use these 7 “New Rules of Business:” (a) having a renewed focus on higher education accountability, (b) continued anxiety over college affordability, (c) waning public support, (d) growing expectations, (e) increasing competition, (f) changing demographics, and (g) the growing leadership crisis.

The Meaning of Money

A sociocultural understanding of affordability is essential to understanding the college cost deliberations of low-income African American and Latino students and their families. Habitus shapes and informs college affordability decisions for students and their families. Using interviews with 63 college counselors in urban secondary schools, low-income underrepresented students’ assessments of affordability were framed by a highly individualized assessment of need, an internalized calculation of costs versus benefits, and an acute awareness of the competing demands resulting from financial scarcity. The perceptual differences concerning college affordability are an unintended consequence of differential tastes between middle-income counselors and low-income families.

Is Opportunity Knocking?

This research study attempts to answer questions regarding how low-income students hear about college and financial aid information and what the impact of this information is on their college opportunity. Findings from a student survey of 11th and 12th graders in seven Southern California low-income high schools illustrate that low-income students make sense of this information within their school culture, perceptions of college affordability, and family backgrounds. Results suggest that college- and financial aid-related information as a means to create college opportunity is not having the impact it should for low-income students.

College Affordability: Implications for College Opportunity

By examining trends in college affordability, this article explores the extent to which the public perception that college is not affordable is justified. First, the article describes trends in national indicators that contribute to ability to pay, including income growth, health care costs, debt burden, and personal savings rates. Trends in college pricing, including tuition and fees, unmet financial need, and student aid, are then examined. Finally, the article considers the potential contribution of these trends to college opportunity. Based on this examination, it is clear that college affordability has declined in recent years, especially for those in low-income and lower-middle-income families. In order to promote equality of college access and choice, policymakers should consider ways to improve affordability, particularly by targeting financial aid resources toward students from low- and lower middle- income backgrounds.

From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the Democratic Mission of the Community College

By expanding higher education’s enrollment capacity, community colleges are understood by many to play an important democratizing role in the American postsecondary system. As public institutions, they also face demands for accountability, productivity, and efficiency, which in recent years have led to a greater market orientation. This article analyzes the ideology of efficiency and its effects on the acclaimed democratizing mission of the public two-year sector. It argues that open access in the traditional sense of nonselective, low-cost enrollment has been eroded by the stratification of educational opportunity and by declining college affordability. Technical and economic efficiency are discussed as concepts having meaning and application distinct from the ideology of efficiency and that are not inherently at odds with equity goals. Performance accountability is explored as a mechanism to collect and examine detailed student outcome data and balance efficiency concerns with a focus on equity.

The student aid game: meeting need and rewarding talent in American higher education

Figures and TablesForewordAcknowledgmentsPt. 1Introduction11Meeting Need and Rewarding Talent: Student Aid in the U.S. System of Higher Education Finance52Changing the Rules: The New Strategic Role of Student Aid15Pt. 2Student Aid and Educational Opportunity: Are We Keeping College Affordable?233Prices and Aid: The Growing Burden on Families254Access: Student Response to Higher Prices - and Higher Returns375Choice: How Ability to Pay Affects College Options426The Future of College Affordability49Pt. 3Student Aid and Institutional Strategy537Student Aid in Institutional Finance558How Government Aid Shapes Colleges' Behavior819Student Aid as a Competitive Weapon91Pt. 4The Special Case of Merit Aid10510Merit Aid: Its Place in History and Its Role in Society10711The Institutional Perspective11612The Student Perspective12213Conclusion: Merit Aid - Good or Bad?130Pt. VThe Future of Student Aid13314Where Do We Go from Here?135Notes145Bibliography153Index157

Parents' Views on the Value of a College Education and How They Will Pay for It

A college education is a rite of passage for many young adults in the United States. The rate of college attendance by high school graduates has been growing steadily for more than 20 years. More than six in ten high school graduates now continue their education after high school by attending a postsecondary institution. While the percentage of high school graduates attending college has grown, so has the cost of attending college. College costs since the 1980s have outpaced inflation while families' real incomes have remained stagnant. During this time, inflation adjusted dollars available to students through federal grants and scholarships remained relatively constant. Taken together, these economic factors are a major cause of the crisis of college affordability.

Keeping College Affordable: Government and the Educational Opportunity

(1994). Keeping College Affordable: Government and the Educational Opportunity. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 226-228.

Keeping College Affordable: Government and the Educational Opportunity.

Keeping College Affordable: Government and the Educational Opportunity.

The Problem of College Affordability: A Review Of Recent Literature on Potential Solutions

There can be little doubt that the existing system of college finance is in trouble. The litany of its problems is well known. Today the real incomes of most Americans are stable or declining, but college tuitions, even at the least expensive public colleges, are spiraling upward at unprecedented rates.

Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity.

As Congress debates the reauthorization of the basic federal student aid legislation, and as governors and state legislators cope with increasingly severe budgetary problems of their own, the issues of preserving college opportunity and sharing the burden of college costs are particularly critical and timely. This book assesses the role of government subsidies for higher education --especially but not exclusively federal student aid --in keeping college affordable for Americans of all economic and social backgrounds. The authors examine the effects of student aid policies of the last twenty years. They address several vital questions, including: Has federal student aid encouraged the enrollment and broadened the educational choices of disadvantaged students? Has it made higher education institutions more secure and educationally more effective --or has it raised costs and prices as schools try to capture additional aid? Has federal student aid made the distribution of higher education's benefits, and the sharing of costs, fairer? And what are the likely trends in patterns of college affordability?Drawing on their analysis, the authors highlight some of the principal dimensions of policy choice on which the debate has focused, as well as some that have been relatively neglected. Building upon their conclusion that student aid works, they propose reforms that would bolster the role of income-tested aid in the overall student financing picture. McPherson and Schapiro recommend a number of incremental reforms that could improve the effectiveness of existing federal aid programs and present a proposal to replace a substantial fraction of state-operating subsidies to colleges and universities with expanded federal aid.

Book Review: Keeping College Affordable, Government and Educational Opportunity

Book Review: Keeping College Affordable, Government and Educational Opportunity

Human Capital and America’s Future: An Economic Strategy for the ’90s; Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity

Human Capital and America’s Future: An Economic Strategy for the ’90s; Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity

Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity

Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity