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Forum Brief

Improving Public Policy to Help Students Pay for Postsecondary Education

A Forum — January 19, 1996

This forum explored government policies for helping students pay for education beyond high school at a time when aid to education is a prominent issue in battles over the federal budget and policy makers are debating the need for, and the effectiveness of, federal student assistance programs.

The forum presenter, Lawrence E. Gladieux, Executive Director for Policy Analysis of the College Board, has written a report, The College Aid Quandary: Access, Quality and the Federal Role, with Arthur Hauptman, a consultant who has published widely on higher education finance.

The authors draw on the thinking of the country's top experts in examining the rationale and structure of the student aid system and how it might more effectively expand opportunities while raising educational quality.  Their analysis encourages policymakers to consider the multiple objectives of government aid--not just getting more students into college, but promoting student success and degree completion.

Gladieux began with a fifty-year retrospective on student aid policy, from the GI Bill to the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993.  He discussed the crucial shifts in policy since the principal programs of today were legislated in the 1960s and 70s.  Those policy changes include:

  • growing reliance on loans
  • erosion of need-based standards
  • growth in self-supporting, nontraditional students
  • use of aid for short-term vocational training
  • use of aid for remediation, or making up academic work that should have been learned at an earlier stage
Gladieux discussed the system's achievements and shortfalls in fostering access, quality and affordability of higher education.  The report explores these issues in depth and proceeds to establish a framework for debate that will be useful to policymakers in the next century.  The parameters of that debate are the student aid strategy, the scope of federal involvement and strengthening current programs.  The forum discussion following Gladieux's presentation focused on many of the thought-provoking questions he raised in this part of the forum and in the report.

Finally, Gladieux outlined several guideposts for reform that are discussed in more depth in the report:

  • Federal policies should emphasize student success as much as access; not just getting students into college, but helping them stay there and complete their degrees.
  • Federal student aid programs should rely less on regulations and provide more incentives to ensure proper behavior by students as well as institutions.
  • Fraud and abuse should be dealt with separately from improving the overall quality of postsecondary education and training.
  • Regulatory policies should differentiate among postsecondary sectors and types of institutions.
  • Federal and state financing policies should be brought into closer alignment for more effective support of equity and quality in higher education.
  • Finally, the goals of the federal aid programs need to be articulated more clearly.
This Brief is based on an American Youth Policy Forum held on January 19, 1996, on Capitol Hill.  Reported by Jennifer Cusack.