The market-based funding model more commonly known as direct student aid, which was adopted by the federal government during the late 1960s and early 1970s, has created a series of unintended consequences that threaten educational equity and the future of public higher education. The economic and societal impacts of the privatization of US public colleges and universities. The rise of for-profit higher education institutions and the use of federal direct student aid and public funding to finance their growth. Public college and university leaders should be extremely concerned if many of these privatization trends continue and new federal funding strategies are not implemented to hold state legislatures and institutions more accountable in the decades to come.