Created in 1972, the Pell Grant program awards grants to low-income students to help pay for whatever accredited U.S. college they choose. Totaling $28.4 billion in 2019-20, the program is the most significant source of federal student aid for college. However, as the program turns 50 this year, many advocates are hoping to expand its reach and…

On August 24, 2022, President Biden announced that his administration would be cancelling $10,000 -- $20,000 of student debt for middle- and lower-income borrowers. Naturally, this announcement has unleashed a wave of follow-up questions among borrowers. This fact sheet is intended to help Californians with student loans navigate the process of…

In December 2023, TICAS published new research on the College Affordability Gap--the gap between students' total cost of attendance and non-loan aid available to them--in California, Michigan, and New York, with a focus on students eligible for Pell Grants. Our new report builds on this research with data from nine additional states (Colorado,…

Substantial increases in public university tuition often raise concerns about college affordability. But assessment of the impacts on low- and moderate-income families requires consideration of whether net tuition--tuition less grant aid--has increased commensurately. This paper describes recent shifts in net tuition by family income and…

Federal Student Aid is money from the Federal Government that helps you pay for college, career school, or graduate school expenses. Federal student aid is available through grants, work-study funds, and loans. Every student who meets certain eligibility requirements can get some type of federal student aid. This brief describes the types of aid…

This article provides remarks delivered by Gen. Mark Brown, Chief Operating Officer for Federal Student Aid on September 19, 2019 at the 2019 National College Access Network (NCAN) Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Gen. Brown granted JCA permission to reprint his remarks.

If the state of California finds the funds, the Cal Grant Reform Act--as enacted in the 2022 Budget Act--is to be implemented in 2024 to support hundreds of thousands of Californians in affording, accessing, and succeeding in higher education. Instead, the state has proposed adding more funding to the less equitable Middle Class Scholarship (MCS)…

TICAS partnered with higher education researcher Dr. Donald E. Heller to examine the "affordability gap" that students are facing when paying for college. The report uses federal data to determine the so-called "college affordability gap" in three states--California, Michigan, and New York--with a focus on students who are…

College affordability is a significant factor in student access, retention, and completion. Tuition and fee rates are a component of affordability, as is the availability of financial aid programs from federal, state, institutional and private sources, among other factors. Strategically designed approaches to college affordability can better…

To improve college access for low-income students, an increasing number of public colleges and universities have implemented no-loan policies, where student loans are replaced with institutional grant aid that does not require repayment. Using detailed income measures provided by Mobility Report Card data, this study examines the effect of no-loan…

The Pell Grant is the cornerstone of the federal student aid programs, providing need-based grant aid to the country's lowest-income postsecondary students. Pell Grants have failed for decades to keep pace with increased college costs and inflation. Doubling the maximum Pell Grant to $13,000 will effectively recalibrate the grant and restore its…

As college promise programs proliferate across the United States with noted intentions to promote access through increased affordability, it is necessary to understand the relationship between these programs and other forms of financial aid, including loans. Using federal, state, and program-level data, we leverage a natural experiment to estimate…

This Insight Brief discusses how students with intellectual disability can utilize federal financial aid to help pay for college. This publication is updated annually to reflect current legislation and policy related to federal financial aid for students with intellectual disabilities. The information provided is current as of January 2023.

Since 1997, education tax benefits have become an increasingly important component of federal higher education policy. For 2023, 11 higher education-related tax benefits are available. After 2025, absent legislative action, this number will effectively increase to 13. Two provisions that are temporarily suspended are scheduled to be…

Generally, need-based financial aid improves students' academic outcomes (Nguyen, Kramer & Evans, 2019). However, the largest source of need-based grant aid in the United States, the Federal Pell Grant Program (Pell), has a mixed evaluation record (Bettinger, 2004; Rubin, 2011; Marx & Turner, 2018; Park & Scott-Clayton, 2018;…