This is a report to members of the Joint Education Appropriations Subcommittee of the Iowa General Assembly. The report summarizes trends in four themes of access and choice for college students in Iowa, including (1) tuition and fees, (2) scholarships and grants, (3) family income, and (4) student loan debt. (Contains 3 tables.)

Refutes the conclusions of W. Lee Hansen and Burton A. Weisbrod in their book, Benefits, Costs, and Finance of Public Higher Education." (CH)

Discusses the advantages of pursuing higher education at a private school and how private schools can attract students from the growing number of affluent families. (AN)

This study explores the relationship between parental SES, ethnicity, and college enrollment. Parental SES is found to translate into a significantly smaller advantage for Hispanics compared to Blacks and Whites. This statistical interaction suggests that high-SES Hispanics are at a unique disadvantage, most likely due to limited access to…

The Spellings Commission report calls for greater access to higher education for low- and moderate-income students, greater transparency in the way higher education works and greater accountability for producing results. These recommendations are all significant in their own right, but the three concepts also converge to provide powerful support…

A unique data set on Taiwan was employed to investigate the socioeconomic family backgrounds of students attending universities. Our empirical study found that individuals attending university are more likely to come from better-educated families than are those who do not attend university. Students attending public universities, which receive…

The expansion of higher education has become a significant trend in the East Asia region, and Taiwan has proven no exception. The driving forces of higher education expansion in Taiwan include enhancing national competitiveness and human capital, responding to social and industrial needs, and reducing educational inequalities among social groups.…

The study aimed to correlate the performance of Pohnpei Campus freshman students in the College of Micronesia-Federated States of Micronesia during the fall semester 2009 to students' socio-demographic characteristics, parents'/guardians' socio-demographic characteristics, and school characteristics. The Student Survey Questionnaire gathered data…

This report discusses eligibility for a new Federal income tax exclusion created by the Technical and Miscellaneous Revenue Act of 1988 for U.S. savings bonds used to pay qualified higher education expenses. The exclusion enables eligible taxpayers to leave out of their gross income the interest earned on series EE savings bonds that are used for…

Uses indices of inequality to measure equality of choice in higher education between 1974 and 1991. These indices compare distribution of parental family income of first-year college students at 13 classifications of higher education institutions with the income distribution of families in the United States. Results show substantial systemic…

This paper discusses questions regarding standards used by the College Scholarship Service (CSS) to measure expected parental contributions to their children's college education. It deals with problems regarding establishment of low and moderate budget levels, family size, discretionary income, and alternative measurement procedures. After…

Higher education plays an increasingly important role in helping individuals attain social and economic success. Yet, despite decades of financial aid policy, substantial gaps in college access remain by income level and race. One major impediment to increasing college enrollment among low-income students is the lack of information about financial…

The Nairn report, The Reign of ETS, asserts that Educational Testing Service (ETS) has attempted to suppress information on the relationship of test scores to students' family income, that the relationship of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores to income is inordinately high, and that the tests preserve the social status quo by denying…

The accuracy of 3 measures of future income was investigated for a sample of families filing Parents' Confidential Statements with the College Scholarship Service (CSS). Measures were: parents' reports of current (1968) income; parents' estimates of 1969 income; and predictions of 1969 income made by application of least squares regression…

The decision to develop an estimated income scale arose from a wish to prove or disprove the statement that colleges like Brown University may be headed toward a situation where the student body will consist of the rich and the poor, the traditional group of middle class having been eliminated. As the research proceeded, it became evident that an…