The advent of merit-based state financial aid programs has had several first order effects, such as changes in enrollment. However, these programs may also have second order effects, such as declining state support for need-based state financial aid programs. I hypothesize that the advent of merit-based state financial aid may be an example of Baumgartner and Jones' punctuated equilibria. Results from estimation of models for dynamic panel data suggest instead that need-based aid has changed only incrementally in the states, without an observable effect of merit-based aid.