The purpose of this study was to report on the effects of a comprehensive set of postsecondary grant aid programs on outcomes from initial college enrollment to post-college employment, based on a systematic review of the literature from January 2002 to January 2020. Studies that used randomized-controlled trials, regression discontinuity designs,…

Becoming HOPEless in the 2-year sector addresses the question: "what happens when a state-wide policy removes merit-based financial aid from low-income students making satisfactory academic progress?" To assess the magnitude of this HOPEless effect, we compared credits attempted, attained, and persistence and graduation indicators of…

This report describes the findings from a series of descriptive analyses seeking to understand the potential relationship between college access and school poverty for high-achieving middle school students, focusing specifically on potential access to state merit-based grant funding. Researchers monitored the academic achievement of more than…

This Statistics in Brief first examines merit aid and other non-need-based aid from all sources and then focuses on two sources of merit aid widely cited in empirical and policy-oriented literature--postsecondary institutions and states--examining how much merit aid students received and the characteristics of students who received it. It tracks…

To compete in the global marketplace, the U.S. economy heavily relies on higher education institutions to educate the college graduates and knowledge workers needed to create the innovative products and services of tomorrow. And yet, where once America led the world in educational attainment, recent data from the Organization for Economic…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the state of Tennessee while also incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. Developed through a process involving elected officials and members of the academic community, the TELS program aims to…

The Department of Education is vitally interested in whether the financial incentives provided by the grants affect student behavior. That is, will the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACGs) induce more economically disadvantaged high school students to complete a rigorous high school program and enroll and succeed in postsecondary education? Will…

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…

The "Higher Education Reconciliation Act of 2005" created two new grant programs for undergraduates: the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) program and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (National SMART) Grant program. The ACG program is intended to encourage students to take challenging courses in high school and thus…

As of 2005, 15 states had adopted a broad-based merit aid program, providing a combined $1.2 billion for college students on the basis of academic qualifications. This represents a shift away from a long tradition of need-based aid at the state and federal levels. This article utilizes a Cox proportional hazards model to analyze states'…