Does Federal Financial Aid Policy Influence the Institutional Aid Policies of Four-Year Colleges and Universities? An Exploratory Analysis

There is a dearth of empirical work that examines the relationships between federal financial aid policy and institutional financial aid priorities and expenditures. This study uses Resource Dependency Theory to explore whether changes the amount of financial aid awarded by colleges and universities during the last fifty years are best explained by changes in federal financial aid policy or by demographic and economic shifts. The results suggest that shifts in federal financial aid policy and in the economy have influenced the amount of institutional financial aid, but indicate that more research is needed on this important topic

A Comparative Study on Need-Based Aid Policy in Higher Education between the State of Indiana and Taiwan

The question of how the government can best support access to postsecondary education has become a critical issue for education policymakers around the globe, as the practice of cost sharing for funding postsecondary education has been more widely adopted. In this context, this study explores the approaches to implementing current need-based financial aid policies in higher education in Indiana and Taiwan using G.Z.F. Bereday’s (1964) comparative method as the framework. Using a comparative cross-national perspective, the authors explored cost sharing, Rawls’ theory of social justice, and the economic principles of horizontal and vertical equity. This review revealed that need-based aid programs in both Indiana and Taiwan were founded on the principle of vertical equity, which aims to equalize educational opportunity for low-income students and minorities. However, the increased popularity of cost sharing and its consequent heavy burden on students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds have made it necessary to reexamine the financial aid systems intended to hold open the door of opportunity for these students. These findings have implications for examining financial aid policy within a global context, as well as asserting the value of cross-national comparisons in postsecondary education. Governments and postsecondary institutions should examine the effects of financial aid systems on college attendance and completion from a longitudinal perspective to allow for a better understanding of the impact of policy changes and to prevent further erosion educational opportunities for students who aspire to a college education

Predicting Student Sensitivity to Tuition and Financial Aid

Over the last two decades, a substantial body of research has examined student responsiveness to tuition increases and financial aid offers in postsecondary educational decisions (see, for example, Heller, 1997; Leslie and Brinkman, 1988). Another major research interest in higher education literature is student behavior in choosing a postsecondary educational institution (see, for example, Hossler, Braxton, and Coopersmith, 1989; Paulsen, 1990). As the costs of postsecondary education have risen, policy analysts and scholars have paid increasing attention to the impact of tuition costs and student financial aid on access to postsecondary education, college matriculation decisions, and subsequent student persistence in postsecondary education (McPherson and Shapiro, 1991, 1998; Mumper, 1996; St. John, 1990a, 1990b; St. John, Starkey, Paulsen and Mbaduagha, 1995; Weiler, 1996). Institutional policy-makers are concerned about student recruitment and enrollment on the one hand and institutional financial health on the other, while state and federal policy-makers are worried about the effective use of public funds to meet national interests such as access, choice, and attainment in postsecondary education. Policy analysts and higher education researchers have recently become concerned about whether students attend college and which schools students attend, because the postsecondary destinations of students are related to student educational attainment and career development (Hearn, 1988, 1991; Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991). Thus, from a social equity perspective, college tuition and financial aid have become serious policy issues. It is believed that the influence of perceived college tuition rates and financial aid availability becomes important during student college choice process and reaches the highest level in the senior year of high school (Hossler and Gallagher, 1987; Hossler, Schmit, and Vesper, 1999). However, not until the last few years has research on the impact of college tuition and financial aid been linked with models of student college choice. Savoca (1990) integrated price impact into her research on student application behaviors to college and concluded that this integration would result in estimating student price responsiveness more accurately. Meanwhile, recent research implies that tuition pricing and financial aid offers exert different impacts on student postsecondary participation decisions (St. John and Starkey, 1995). The purpose of this study is to identify the predictors of student sensitivity to college tuition and financial aid and to differentiate the impacts of these predictors on student price sensitivity in the student college choice process

Family Knowledge of Postsecondary Costs And Financial Aid

Federal policymakers have recently expressed interest in family knowledge of student financial aid and postsecondary costs and the impact of family knowledge on student access. Analyzing a longitudinal data set of Indiana high school students, this study looks at student and parental knowledge of student financial aid and postsecondary costs. The results suggest that parents are more interested than students in information about postsecondary costs and student financial aid. Furthermore, the findings indicate that efforts to increase family knowledge should simultaneously focus on general information about aid and costs rather than on details about specific aid programs. This article was presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Student Financial Aid Research Network Conference, Washington, D. C., May 16, 1990

Fifty Years of College Choice: Social, Political and Institutional Influences on the Decision-Making Process

Explores how the process of choosing colleges has evolved for high school students during the second half of the twentieth century, the factors behind the changes, and the implications of recent developments for postsecondary equity, access, and success

What Matters in Student Loan Default: A Review of the Research Literature

Federal higher education policy has shifted over the past few decades from grants to lloans as the primary means for providing access to postsecondary education for low and moderate-income families. With this shift, policy makers have begun tracking student loan default rates as a key indicator of the efficacy of student loan programs. This effort requires a closer examination of how to define default and what default signifies: What is an acceptable rate of default? What factors contribute to default? Should default rates be used as indicators of institutional quality or loan program efficacy? These questions lead to further investigation of factors influencing default, such as whether default is a function of the characteristics of students or of the institutions they attend, and whether the types of loans borrowed influence the probabilities of default. To help answer these and related questions, this study reviewed the literature of research on student loan default conducted between 1978 and 2007, and identified 41 of the higher quality studies, the findings of which are summarized here

Mobile Working Students: A Delicate Balance of College, Family, and Work

Increasingly, education policymakers are turning attention to the access and persistence of the new college majority,-a group that may be described as mobile working students (Ewell, Schild, & Paulson, 2003). Traditionally, much research on college students has focused on students who graduate from high school and move on to attend a four-year college on a full-time basis, graduating in four to six years. However, as Adelman (2006) and others show, even among traditional-age college students this pattern of linear enrollment is less and less common. Thus, as Kasworm (chapter 2) also argues, metaphors such as the education pipeline no longer fit. Instead, students are more accurately represented as moving along pathways or even swirling toward postsecondary success. The experience of the mobile working student as conceived in this chapter encompasses multiple aspects of mobility and the varied, nonlinear, and evolving patterns of college going increasingly characteristic of students nationwide. One aspect of mobility in this complex and emerging picture centers on students\u27 experiences at commuter institutions, moving onto and off of campuses. In addition, students enroll in multiple institutions, moving between them. Finally, because they move into and out of institutions as well, the concomitant issues of attrition, stop-out, and degree attainment are also important to this project.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1048/thumbnail.jp

Institutional Merit-Based Aid and Student Departure: A Longitudinal Analysis

The use of merit criteria in awarding institutional aid has grown considerably and, some argue, is supplanting need as the central factor in awarding aid. Concurrently, the accountability movement in higher education has placed greater emphasis on retention and graduation as indicators of institutional success and quality. In this context, this study explores the relationship between institutional merit aid and student departure from a statewide system of higher education. We found that, once we account for self-selection to the extent possible, there was no significant relationship. By contrast, need-based aid was consistently related to decreased odds of departure

New directions for institutional research

Publ. comme no 70, summer 1991 de la revue New directions for institutional researchBibliogr. à la fin des textesIndex: p. 101-10