Dive Summary:
- A new paper, "Aligning the Means and the Ends: How to Improve Federal Student Aid and Increase College Access and Success," released Tuesday by the Institute for College Access & Success argues that improving the financial aid system could improve the college achievement gap.
- Some of the suggestions in the 80-page paper--released as a contribution to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-sponsored Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery project--are familiar, including a simpler financial aid application process, making the Pell Grant program a mandatory budget item and promoting clearer college cost information.
- Additionally, the paper argues that higher education institutions should be held accountable for whether their graduates have high-quality degrees and manageable debt, saying that taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to subsidize schools that "routinely do more harm than good" and proposing a "Student Default Risk Index" to determine colleges' eligibility for federal aid.
From the article:
The gap in college attainment between children of high- and low-income families casts a shadow over both our national economy and the American dream. Improving the financial-aid system won't close that gap, but could certainly narrow it. Those are the premises of a white paper released on Tuesday by the Institute for College Access & Success. ...