Topic: policy & research
FAFSA Simplification: Harder Than It Seems
Making it easy for students and families to apply for federal student aid is a little like the Holy Grail—universally sought for its extraordinary value, but never found. And the search likely will intensify as Congress works to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, writes Terry Hartle. At issue is the FAFSA, the form that students and families must fill out to get federal student aid.
Fighting Food Insecurity on Campus
College and university administrators and leaders around the country increasingly are realizing that undergraduate students are among the millions of Americans who experience food insecurity, or a lack of resources to obtain nutritional food. Chris Nellum looks at what we can do about the problem, which has grown significantly in the years since the Great Recession.
Mapping New Pathways for Native Youth
While 208,838 American Indian and Alaska Native students were enrolled in college in 2012—a 17 percent increase from 2004—46 percent are first-generation and low-income, a population that often struggles with college completion. As the White House gears up for the first Tribal Youth Gathering, Christine Nelson looks at efforts to expand higher education opportunities for these students.
Will Performance-Based Funding Further Disadvantage Disadvantaged Students?
Performance-based funding (PBF) is becoming increasingly popular as an accountability tool to reward higher education institutions for specific student outcomes. Despite its popularity, however, a substantial body of empirical evidence shows PBF can have troubling and unintended impacts. With this in mind, Lyle McKinney and Linda Serra Hagedorn look at the Texas Student Success Points Model.
Where Are the Women in STEM?
From decades of widely reported and debated research, we know that women have been enrolling in and graduating from college in greater numbers than men since the 1980s. But there is one area where the increased presence of women is notably missing—the so-called STEM fields: with the greatest disparities occurring in the important fields of engineering and computer science.