This review of the connection between student financial aid and student access to and success in higher education draws on existing research on these issues and makes recommendations for national policy on student aid and higher education. The resulting recommendations are: (1) create a new federal strategy, the College Success Program (CSP) that links current student support and intervention programs and provides new mechanisms to promote student success in college; (2) establish a mechanism for converting CSPs into grant funding that promotes student persistence in college; (3) modify the Federal College Work-Study program to expand opportunities for student work that are related in a meaningful way to declared educational or career goals; (4) increase support for the TRIO and National Early Intervention Scholarship and Partnership programs; (5) create a new program, modeled on the Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, that awards competitive grants to institutions that develop and successfully administer systemic efforts for increasing student persistence; (6) implement the Student's Total Education Package (STEP) proposal from the National Commission on Responsibility for Financing Postsecondary Education; and (7) exempt high performing institutions from certain government regulations to encourage greater emphasis on student success. (Contains 39 endnotes.) (JB)