Making college accessible to all includes making it affordable to lower-income families. A growing policy strategy at the state level is to provide individual students with need-based financial aid to offset tuition and living expenses. This strategy inherently presents challenges in choosing which income levels are eligible to receive aid,…

Public universities typically charge students less than the full cost of education, using funds from state and local government and other sources to cover the difference. This indirect subsidy is one of the largest forms of aid in America's higher education system but is less understood in the policy community than grants and loans, which are…

In 2004 and 2005, the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education (Pell Institute), sponsored by the Council for Opportunity in Education (COE), published two editions of "Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education." In 2015, the commitment to documenting trends in higher education equity was renewed by publishing…

This report, the seventh in this series, brings together again in partnership the Pell Institute with the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy of the University of Pennsylvania (PennAHEAD). These reports draw from multiple sources of existing data to provide, in one place, indicators that describe trends in equity in postsecondary…

This "First Look" report presents selected findings about the repayment of federal student loans using data from the 2015 Federal Student Aid Supplements to two Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Studies (BPS) administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The report examines two cohorts of borrowers:…

In this study, I exploit exogenous differences in institutional policies regarding the treatment of home equity in grant aid allocation to estimate a causal impact of institutional grant aid on college choice. Because institutional grant aid is typically not awarded randomly, the college-estimated home equity value serves as an instrumental…

Students and families all over the country are saving, working, taking out loans, and taking steps to make college affordable. Yet they still find themselves facing an unreasonably high price for college, with unexpected, and sometimes untenable, expenses, and fall short of the resources they need to successfully complete degrees. Financial…

This Data Point uses data from four administrations of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:2000, NPSAS:04, NPSAS:08, and NPSAS:12) to briefly present trends in out-of-pocket net price for college, the amount that students and their families must pay to attend college after subtracting grants, loans, work-study, and all other…

New evidence on how students' choice of postsecondary institution is sensitive to grant aid offers from the colleges and universities. Institutional aid sensitivity is largest for students from the least wealthy families but does not vary by race/ethnicity or measured academic ability. A technical appendix is included.

The purpose of this study was to find out if the demographic variables of country of origin, generation in the United States (immigration status), income and parental education had an impact on the financial aid packages of Hispanic undergraduate students. This dissertation asked: What is the relation between generation in the United States,…

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 71 percent in Kansas. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment in Kansas.…

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 74 percent in Minnesota. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment in Minnesota.…

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 70 percent in Michigan. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment in Michigan.…

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 64 percent in Ohio. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment in Ohio. Performance…

In the United States, approximately 65 percent of all jobs in 2020 will require some level of postsecondary education, and the demand will reach 66 percent in Missouri. This report seeks to inform public discourse on higher education by providing key performance indicators relevant to the goal of improving educational attainment in Missouri.…