This paper examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible theoretical advantages. We use student-level data to examine…

Do tuition vouchers and cash subsidies promote educational or labor force outcomes for "non-traditional" students? I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impacts of a state aid program with an unobserved eligibility cutoff. Eligibility has no impact on degree completion for students with a preference for community…

About 30 percent of California's future jobs will require some training beyond high school but less than a four-year college degree. And in today's economy, jobs that offer family-supporting incomes often require some postsecondary education. Career education prepares students for these "middle-skill" jobs by providing occupation- and…

State policy leaders have an opportunity to take leadership in protecting students--and especially student veterans--from being targeted by predatory colleges. Given failings by the federal government to police for-profit colleges and to ensure basic rights for students to attend college without being defrauded, it now falls to the states to step…

California needs 2.3 million more people with postsecondary credentials by 2025, but that goal cannot be achieved at current college completion rates. Overall, only 32 percent of California college students complete credentials on time. Low-income students are much less likely than higher income students to enroll in or complete college, and these…

In the first decade of the 21st century, the nation, the states, and colleges and universities began to grapple with the challenges of globalization, changing demography, the implications of the digital era, and of a less expansive public sector. Although not a transformative period for higher education, the decade saw significant innovations in…

A study was undertaken of proprietary school oversight and regulation in order to seek ways to improve state oversight of the proprietary sector. Twenty states participated in the study which used questionnaires sent to key state contact persons, telephone interviews conducted primarily with persons who had received the questionnaires and…

Long-term needs of California for postsecondary education and the state's ability to meet the needs will be reassessed by the California Postsecondary Education Commission. Assumptions of the Commission's current long-range planning effort are briefly reviewed. The scope of postsecondary education will include public and private nonprofit and…

The National Association of State Scholarship and Grant Programs/National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs conference on student aid is reported. Following the conference agenda and lists of registrants and conference speakers, the following papers are presented: (1) "Reinterpretation of Hansen's Census Data" (John B. Lee); (2)…