College costs have significantly increased. Some even think that it is not worth
ID: 1104180 • Letter: C
Question
College costs have significantly increased. Some even think that it is not worth getting a college education because it leaves you with too much debt. Find and read at least 4 articles then address the following:
What policies have been proposed to address the cost of a college education? Are these feasible? Both the federal and some state governments have suggested free community college (including Oregon) Since nothing is "free" how would this actually be accomplished?
Is this the answer to college costs ?
Explanation / Answer
The policies are as follows :-
The Pell Grant, which was introduced in 1972 as the Basic Education Opportunity Grant, is the nation’s largest need-based grant program. Research on its effectiveness, however, has left more puzzles than answers. In one line of study, researchers have compared the enrollment rates of low-income students before and after 1972, with ineligible students serving as a control group
The Georgia HOPE Scholarship is another grant program that has been evaluated. Introduced in 1993, the program pays for the in-state public tuition of Georgia residents with at least a B average in high school; residents choosing to attend in-state private colleges received $3,000 during the early years of the program. Similar to the SSSB, the HOPE Scholarship is simple in design and much effort was made to publicize the program and to train high school guidance counselors on how to help their students access the program.
The Cal Grant is another large state grant program. Its eligibility criteria mix both need and merit as students must meet thresholds in income, assets, and high school GPA. The results of a study by Kane have suggested that there are large effects (3 to 4 percentage points) of grant eligibility on college enrollment among financial aid applicants, with larger effects on the choice of private four-year colleges in California. Unlike with the SSSB and Georgia HOPE Scholarship, the large response to the Cal Grant seems to be in spite of its design. Some suspect that the impact of the program could have been larger, because reports indicate many eligible students, as many as 19,000, failed to apply.
Loans have become the most prominent form of student funding for postsecondary education during the past 15 years. This is especially true for full-time, full-year students. In my study with Riley, from 1989-90 to 2003-04, the proportion of full-time, full-year students with loans rose from 36 to 50%. Moreover, average annual loan amounts during this period grew 38% in constant 2003 dollars, from $4,486 to $6,200. While 79% of loan volume is awarded by federal programs (Stafford, Perkins, and PLUS), private loan volume has risen substantially. From 1998-99 to 2007-08, the amount given in private loans grew by a multiple of six, after adjusting for inflation.
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and the general aid application process highlight the tradeoffs between simplicity and means testing that must be balanced in policy design. At its most basic level, the FAFSA attempts to discern how financially needy students are in order to determine how to distribute limited government financial aid.
It collects a wealth of information about a family’s situation in the hope of equitably treating families with similar situations. However, many critics surmise that the lack of information about financial aid is linked to this process.
Need-based versus merit-based aid
Based on the above reasoning, it is important to note that the research literature documents that different types of grants vary in who and how they affect college decisions. For instance, the merit-based Georgia HOPE Scholarship had large effects on college access overall, but the benefits of the program were not evenly distributed.
Recent federal aid policies also have moved away from focusing on increasing the basic access of low-income students. In 1992, federal financial need calculations began to exclude home equity, thereby allowing many more middle-class families to qualify for federal need-based support.
why the policies are not feasible:-
A major critique is that the FAFSA is long and cumbersome. Until recently, to determine eligibility, students and their families had to fill out an eight-page, detailed form containing over 100 questions. To answer three of these, students had to complete three additional worksheets with nearly 40 additional questions. Even the lowest income students, who had already established their eligibility for other federal means-tested programs and were known to be eligible for federal student aid, had to go through this arduous process. Not surprisingly, research suggests that students and their families are often confused and even deterred by the form
The low levels of awareness about aid and the misinformation of many families has serious implications for the effectiveness of any policy or program. In a world with many misinformed or unaware families, unless a program is highly publicized and simple to access, it is unlikely to have a major impact on college enrollment.
Implicit in policy design are tradeoffs between making a program simple to understand and the need to limit eligibility to only a subset of students due to finite resources. On the one hand, in order to have an impact on behavior, students and their families must be aware of the policies designed to help them and understand how to access them. On the other hand, given the focus on helping a particular type of student (e.g., financially needy students), some type of means testing must be in place to ensure that only students with actual need (or some other criteria) are eligible to receive the aid.
For these reasons of efficiency, many arguments have been made for elaborate application procedures for such need-based programs as the Pell Grant. However, introducing complexity into how aid is awarded can also be a source of informational barriers.