For millions of students, the increasing cost of a college education, combined with lower rates of growth in grant aid, have resulted in additional reliance on student loans to pay for college. The large and growing role of student loans introduces a concern that an aversion to borrowing could be limiting college enrollment choices for some…

This report contains a conceptual framework for analyzing costs and prices by evaluating the higher education production function and the determinants of both prices and costs. The framework can be used to strengthen understanding of costs and prices within individual institutions and to inform macro level investments at state and national levels.…

Analyzes trends in costs paid by postsecondary institutions to provide education, prices paid by students and their families, and revenues received by institutions. Also explores relationships among these variables. Universe data are primarily from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. (SLD)

This report describes student borrowing by comparing different groups of undergraduate borrowers. Two sets of borrower groups are examined: (1) high, medium, low, and nonborrowers as defined by borrowing from all sources in 1999-2000 (excluding federal Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students and loans from family or friends); and (2) Stafford loan…

In the 1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act, Congress directed the National Center for Education Statistics to conduct a new study of higher education costs paid by institutions and prices paid by students and their families. This report contains commissioned papers prepared in support of this study and a summary of a meeting convened to…

This report focuses on first-time, full-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates in order to examine patterns of sticker prices, financial aid, and net prices from an institutional perspective. For the period 1999-2000 to 2001-02, the report examines how the price of attendance for full-time freshmen changed for various types of…

In the 1998 Amendments to the Higher Education Act, Congress directed the National Center for Education Statistics to conduct a new study of higher education costs paid by institutions and prices paid by students and their families. This report is the final product of phase 1 of that study, which relied primarily on existing national data and…

This report examines access to higher education in underserved regions of Michigan. This study focuses on specific concerns about postsecondary education access in three geographically diverse areas of the state: suburban Macomb County; the city of Saginaw; and six rural counties in the northeastern Lower Peninsula. The report provides a summary…

This report presents a comprehensive overview of the parental role in higher education. It is on various data sources, including a nationally representative survey of 750 parents of current college students. The report addresses issues ranging from selecting an institution, to paying tuition, to patterns of saving and borrowing, to the demographic…

Financial aid plays a critical role in the postsecondary education of Latino students. However, very little comprehensive and easy to understand information is available about what types or how much financial aid Latinos receive. The goal of this brief is to provide timely and accurate information about how Latino undergraduates currently…