In the 1980s, a Republican president led a defense build-up in response to foreign crises, and his education secretary, chided the establishment on school reform. Legal experts debated the merits of affirmative action, while advocates questioned the growing reliance of students on loans instead of grants to finance a college education. Sound familiar? While the names have changed--and some of the laws--many of the age-old debates have remained the same in the years since the first editions of "Black Issues in Higher Education." In fact, some argue that the federal government did more for low-income students of color two decades ago than it does now. "We have driven down the ladder of opportunity," says Thomas Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. A staunch advocate of need-based financial aid, Mortenson says such aid represented 86 percent of the student aid budget in the mid-1980s. The rate is now 52 percent, due largely to the declining value of Pell Grants and programs such as the HOPE Scholarship that emphasize merit rather than low-income status. "Now we focus on holding the line," he said, rather than expanding programs. To be sure, much about federal higher education policy has changed in the past two decades. Aid to historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions has increased greatly, and these institutions have greater visibility in the eyes of policy-makers. After years of stagnation, federal Pell Grants also received important increases in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Twenty years from now, however rest assured that many issues from the 1980s will remain on higher education's front burner.