Higher education gets a bad rap these days. The public perception is that there is a growing rift between public universities and the elected officials who support them. In "What's Public about Public Higher Ed?," Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee explore the reality of that supposed divide, offering qualitative and quantitative…

U.S. citizens or permanent residents, enrolled at least half time in a qualified program at a participating school, not in default on a prior federal student loan, and not previously convicted of a drug offense while receiving federal financial aid are eligible to apply for a student loan. This chart summarizes the interest rates, loan limits, and…

Making college more affordable for families has been a critical issue for states in the SREB region for many years. Now the negative economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have created additional barriers to college affordability. This brief provides an overview of college affordability in the SREB region based on data from the 2017-2018…

Community colleges offer a variety of workforce-oriented programs intended to help students gain skills and knowledge for a specific career or occupation. Among these are short-term credentials, designed to teach students a specific skillset related to an occupation, often in response to local labor market needs. Types of short-term credentials…

Financial aid has helped millions of students pay for their education beyond high school. This document provides information about federal and Minnesota financial aid programs, including the following sections: (1) How do I apply for financial aid?; (2) Five basic steps to apply for financial aid; (3) What types of financial aid are available?;…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the role of a debt mitigation program as an incentive for adult student reengagement and to ascertain students' perceptions of the institution after reenrolling in college via the program. The debt mitigation program was the first in the nation to forgive past-due student institutional debt,…

If the state of California finds the funds, the Cal Grant Reform Act--as enacted in the 2022 Budget Act--is to be implemented in 2024 to support hundreds of thousands of Californians in affording, accessing, and succeeding in higher education. Instead, the state has proposed adding more funding to the less equitable Middle Class Scholarship (MCS)…

The new Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE), due to start in 2025, is a major and positive improvement to how the student support system in England enables lifelong participation in higher education. It also has the prospect of commanding cross-party support, at least in broad design if not in the detail. However, in this timely Policy Note, Rose…

Although student loan debt has been rigorously studied over the past several decades, scant research has investigated how institutions of higher education communicate debt to current and former student borrowers. As COVID-19 forced the United States Department of Education to cancel the Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement as part of a student's…

Although there is a wealth of literature focused on how and why college students persist, less is known about a subpopulation of college students: students on academic probation and/or financial aid warning status, i.e., students who are potentially one semester away from academic suspension and/or lost financial aid eligibility. This study seeks…

Higher education accreditation creates barriers to entry for innovative start-ups while being a poor gauge of program quality and student outcomes. What began as a voluntary system became a de facto requirement, with accreditors abusing their power. To harness the potential of new learning modes, policymakers should consider meaningful structural…

TICAS partnered with higher education researcher Dr. Donald E. Heller to examine the "affordability gap" that students are facing when paying for college. The report uses federal data to determine the so-called "college affordability gap" in three states--California, Michigan, and New York--with a focus on students who are…

Previous research shows that low-income and first-generation college students are less likely to obtain the benefits associated with attending graduate school. No-loan programs, which typically administer financial aid through institutional grants, are designed to improve access and success among students from low-income backgrounds, but we know…

COVID-19 is a deadly pandemic that caused many colleges and universities to send students home and move courses online or to a hybrid of online and in-person learning. This qualitative study provides research on the impact of COVID-19 on the motivators and barriers of first- generation college students (FGCS). The study used a sample of FGCS…

About half of the more than $1 trillion in outstanding federal student Direct Loans are being repaid by borrowers using IDR plans. Some borrowers in IDR plans are now potentially eligible for forgiveness of their remaining loan balances after 20 or 25 years of payments. GAO was asked to review IDR forgiveness. This report examines: (1) how many…