Due to the increasing complexity in the financial aid process and the movement of available financial aid up the economic scale, poor people and minorities have less access to college, including engineering programs. Some impediments are lack of access to knowledge about college, increasing complexity and up-front costs in the application process and a gradual legislative and judicial change to provide aid to wealthier families. The latter changes include the weakening of the Pell Grant, increasing reliance on student loans, loans granted regardless of need, tax breaks for college savings, "merit" based aid, early-admissions politics and the anti-trust decision that resulted in a lack of consistency in creating financial-aid formulas. A rededication to need-based financial aid would increase the number of minorities attending and graduating from college. (Contains 20 endnotes.) [This paper was first published in the digital proceedings of the Spring 2007 ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) Mid-Atlantic Section Conference at New Jersey Institute of Technology, April 14, 2007.]