Federal student loans include a complex consolidation option that gives borrowers the opportunity to combine several loans into a single loan with a longer term to maturity and, for loans originated before July 2006, to convert from a variable- to a fixed-rate loan. The consolidation option adds substantial costs to the federal student loan…

In 2004, the Legislature and the Governor of Washington State revised the roles and responsibilities of the Higher Education Coordinating Board (HECB). House Bill 3103 directed the HECB to establish an accountability monitoring and reporting system to determine how performance would be measured, set targets for achievement within this framework,…

Student aid policy around the developed world depends to varying degrees on the idea that the cost of post-secondary education needs to be subsidized. Despite the fact that governments around the world are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to support and widen participation in higher education, policymakers pay surprisingly little attention…

This report describes the methods and procedures used for the 2004 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:04). NPSAS:04 is a comprehensive study of financial aid among postsecondary education students in the United States and Puerto Rico that provides information on trends in financial aid and on the ways in which families pay for…

This report uses the 2003-04 NPSAS data to describe the characteristics of graduate and first professional students and how they finance their education, with a section focusing on students who attend exclusively part time. The report also includes a compendium of tables providing detailed data on student and enrollment characteristics, types of…

This paper is a report on the statewide effort to address the rising costs of college textbooks in Connecticut. The report is in four sections: (1) a summary of the recommendations made by the Connecticut Taskforce on the Cost of College Textbooks, in response to Special Act 04-3; (2) a summary of actions taken by the Board of Governors for Higher…

AISD's Project ADVANCE (Assess, Decide, Visit, Apply Now for your College Education) received $994,775 from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) to support college and career preparation efforts in all 12 district high schools. During the 2005-2006 school year, the Project ADVANCE staff at each campus worked with high school students and…

The purpose of this study is to determine how ending affirmative action in public colleges in Texas affected the percent of minority high school graduates applying to college. I find the end of affirmative action significantly lowered the percent of Hispanic students applying to college by 1.6 percentage points and significantly lowered the…

Using a weighted database of approximately 3,000 students, this study involves the tracing of the postsecondary history of 2,516 students who identified as Native Hawaiian, graduated from high school between 1993 and 1995, and attended college. Virtually none of the students are 100% Hawaiian. Due to a long history of intermarriage, the Hawaiian…

The District of Columbia Tuition Assistance Grant Program (DCTAG), instituted in 1999, allows D.C. residents to attend public colleges and universities throughout the country at considerably lower in-state tuition rates. We use the sharp decline in the price of public colleges and universities faced by D.C. residents to estimate the effects of…

The Department of Education's May 2, 2006 announcement of a variety of methods that high schools may use to provide a "rigorous" curriculum to allow low-income graduates to qualify for a new federal college-grant program was welcome news to those who had feared that the government's reach into the classroom was too expansive. Students who complete…

Today's community college serves as the entry point to well-paying technical jobs as well as the entry point to the baccalaureate degree and beyond. What, then, can be done to ensure that low-income students have access to and success in community colleges? Research, both theoretical and empirical, shows that there is no one student characteristic…

The paper presents a first assessment of the effects of changes in the Norwegian student support system, implemented in 2002-2003. Data have been drawn from NSELF, the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund and from "Statistics Norway" (various years). Covering the period 2001-04, the data compare the number and composition of those…

This report presents a model and an approach that institutions of higher education can use to analyze and project the impact of endogenous and exogenous factors on both net and gross tuition in the context of the increasing practice of tuition discounting. It is noted that two key questions drive this effort: (1) what influence does gross tuition…

Designed to help high school guidance counselors advise students about financial aid for postsecondary education, this handbook provides information on sources of aid from programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education. The guide is divided into three parts: (1) General Information about Postsecondary Opportunities; (2) The Application…