China has made remarkable progress along the path of economic transformation over the past three decades. To continue its rapid growth in an economy with increasingly higher wages, China's key challenge is whether it can become competitive enough in quasi-skilled and skilled sectors so that more technologically advanced industries and service…

Most economists expect the current economic downturn to be one of the most severe since World War II. In fact, there is a very real danger that the changing circumstances of students, families, state and federal governments, and educational institutions could interact to significantly diminish educational opportunity in the United States. The most…

Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) is an income contingent loan scheme, in which university students pay back part of the costs of their tuition after their post-university income reaches a certain threshold, is an important policy innovation for the financing of higher education. However, its critics claim that HECS increases…

Many students are unaware that they might be eligible for financial aid to attend college or trade school. High school, TRIO, and GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) counselors are an important source of information about financial aid from private, school, state, and federal student aid programs. This…

This report provides summary information concerning personnel, revenues, expenses and other comparative variables of men's and women's intercollegiate athletics programs at NCAA member institutions for the 2005-2006 fiscal year. The summary information may be used to help track gender-equity issues at the collegiate level. This report is the…

In this paper, we investigate the responsiveness of the demand for college to changes in student aid arising from a Danish reform. We separately identify the effect of aid from that of other observed and unobserved variables such as parental income. We exploit the combination of a kinked aid scheme and a reform of the student aid scheme to…

The authors compare various characteristics of terminal master's of economics programs in Canada and the United States. As far as they know, this is the first article to present results from a survey of Canadian master's programs in economics. Using a Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, they found significant differences between the Canadian and U.S.…

The troubled student-loan market is a hot topic among legislators, policy makers, and the public. Two recurring issues are how to ensure that enough funds are available to students and how to ensure that lenders are fully repaid. Yet despite all the talk about loans, little has been proposed to help college students and their families with the…

Enrollment management has become an important leadership function on many college and university campuses. It is also attracting critical attention here and abroad among observers of the system of postsecondary education. With this essay, the authors continue a series that examines policies and practices that are central to campus-based efforts to…

As state-level merit-based financial aid programs proliferate, analysts both find that these programs have a disproportionate effect on students traditionally under-represented in postsecondary education and question the use of limited public resources in an inefficient and inequitable manner. This study, using survey data regarding the…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, and the American people on how the Department has used federal resources entrusted to it to promote achievement and preparedness of youth entering a global environment by…

The table of contents divides this handbook into two chapters. The first chapter, Overawards, defines the term, and then discusses a student's and a school's responsibility for resolving overpayments and overawards. Following the award of an aid package, student circumstances may change and result in an overaward. For instance, the student may…

This guide and training manual, in loose-leaf format, is intended to assist lenders and schools participating in the Colorado Student Loan Program (CSLP). The manual consists of a series of single page (front and back) "ready references." Each ready reference includes a title followed by information on the subject and suggestions for…

The primary purpose of this handbook, which provides information on sources of financial aid and how to apply for it from the programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education, is to help financial aid administrators advise students in seeking financial aid for postsecondary education. The handbook is divided into three sections: (1) Part…

This trainee workbook, to accompany a one-day workshop at the Student Financial Assistance (SFA) University, is intended for individuals who are processing student financial aid applications using electronic methods such as EDExpress (Electronic Data Exchange) or FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) Express. The first section of the…