Financing

Research related to College Financing

Squeezed from All Sides: The CSU Crisis and California's Future

This report is the first in a series called "The CSU Crisis and California’s Future." These reports are designed to analyze the impact of the fiscal cutbacks on opportunity for higher education in the California State University system, the huge network of 23 universities that provide the greatest amount of BA level of education in the state. The CSU has a much larger undergraduate student body than the University of California system and educates a much larger group of Latino and African American students. Many CSU students are first generation college students struggling to get an education in difficult times. This first report looks at how students are impacted by the fiscal crisis and budget cuts to CSUs. When the state of California adopted the Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 it made a social contract with the young people of the state to provide them with a higher education. But the state has broken that social contract for many of its students. California has great wealth, but it also has many millions living in poverty with very low levels of education.

State Merit Scholarship Programs and Racial Inequality

Unmet financial need – the gap between the costs of attending college and the resources available to students from their families and from all sources of financial aid – presents a major barrier to college for students from lower-income families. The federal Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance found that unmet need is a barrier both to students’ initial enrollment in college and to their ability to persist through and earn a degree.

Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State: The Talented 20 Program in Florida

After a review of Florida state and institutional data and interviews with staff at five campuses of the Florida State University System and several Florida state agencies, this report describes the history, implementation, and effects of the Talented 20 Program. The report concludes that Talented 20 Plan is, in fact, not race-neutral and is not an effective alternative to race-conscious affirmative action.

Who Should We Help? The Negative Social Consequences of Merit Scholarships

From a civil rights standpoint, shifting from need-based to "merit" aid means shifting funds from blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans to whites and Asians, from city and rural residents to suburban residents, from children from one-parent families to those who have two parents.