Strategic enrollment management (SEM) initiatives benefit when SEM committees are inclusive and collaborative. When financial aid professionals are excluded, the risk that certain initiatives will fail increases, especially if those initiatives involve academic changes. Here, the authors explore the reasons financial aid offices and academic…

Promise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors. Simultaneously, scholarly literature discussing…

This brief, the third in a series produced by the California College Promise Project (CCPP) at WestEd, describes research conducted by the CCPP on the relationship between the 2017 legislation "Community Colleges: California College Promise" (AB19) and the structure of local College Promise programs. The analysis examines College Promise…

Recent increases in tuition levels, accelerated by declining state funding to institutions, have combined with stagnant or falling household incomes to make it more difficult for many college students to finance postsecondary education. In this environment, state grant programs are more important than ever. These funds have the potential to make…

The Workforce Training and Economic Development (WTED) Fund was established in 2003 as part of the Grow Iowa Values Fund and is currently funded through the Iowa Skilled Worker and Job Creation Fund. This fund has become an important source of financing for community college new program innovation, development, and capacity building, particularly…

Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) is an innovative program and strategy developed by the Washington (WA) State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) in conjunction with the state's 29 community colleges and five technical colleges. Its goal is to increase the rate at which adult basic education and…

An analysis of the federal Stafford Student Loan Program summarizes its successes, limitations, and numerous problems and explains why reform has not yet occurred. A policy stalemate in Congress, lack of a well-developed reform alternative, and newly professionalized and mobilized interest groups are seen as making change unlikely. (Author/MSE)

Research on changes in the design of the federal Pell Grant Program between 1973-74 and 1988-89 is reported, with focus on changes in the formulas used to calculate the Student Aid Index and the payment schedule, especially with reference to actual direct and indirect college attendance costs. (Author/MSE)

The process of reauthorization of college student financial aid legislation may be instrumental in reducing the burden and complexity of the financial aid application and need analysis process through simplification. Exempting some students, permitting more to use simplified need analysis, and streamlining reapplication are steps in the right…

This report asserts that college work-study programs have been very successful in creating wage-paying jobs for low-income students who need funds for college expenses. There are compelling reasons to build on this legacy of college work-study to create new work-study initiatives designed explicitly for welfare recipients. Some of the key program…

Stage Two of the Title IV Quality Control Project is an integrated study of quality in five related Federal financial aid programs for postsecondary students. Section 1 of the paper establishes a framework for defining quality improvements, in order to identify the types of changes that would tend to improve quality across all facets of the…

This paper provides a basic understanding of the Pell Grant program and summarizes the evidence regarding its effectiveness. The Basic Educational Opportunities Program, known as the Pell Grant program, began in 1973 as a means of providing disadvantaged students access to a postsecondary education. The Pell Grant program has tried to keep up with…

This report is the fifth review of the accomplishments of Washington's 32 two-year colleges under the provisions of the Worker Retraining program. The Worker Retraining program assures that jobless workers have immediate access to job retraining for a new career if they are not able to find work in their current field. It also builds the capacity…

This evaluative report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) summarizes Department of Education actions made through April 1996 in response to 205 recommendations to improve the management of federal student financial aid programs. The report concludes that the Department had completed actions or had actions in progress or planned for 186 of the…

A discussion of the high level of student borrowing to pay for higher education looks at the situation today, examines college cost and aid trends, explores implications for the future if students continue to increase their borrowing, and offers a proposal to create a new generation of loan forgiveness programs through a public/private…