In today's interconnected world, many career fields--such as diplomacy, national security, and business--need individuals with knowledge about world languages and cultures. To address these areas of needed expertise--both at the federal level as well as in the education, business, and nonprofit sectors--the Higher Education Act of 1965, as…

The purported "Golden Age" of American higher education, typically associated with the two decades following World War II, was marked by increasingly generous federal support of the nation's postsecondary institutions and their students. Unlike analyses that attribute this largesse to factors like geopolitics (i.e., a response to the…

There was a lot of talk about both the fate of American democracy and American higher education in 2021, but not much consideration about how the two were deeply intertwined. The 1947 report "Higher Education for American Democracy" showed awareness of how race, sex, class, and religious discrimination thwarted the talents and ambitions…

In "The Convergence of K-12 and Higher Education," two leading scholars of education policy bring together a distinguished and varied array of contributors to systematically examine the growing convergence between the K-12 and higher education sectors in the United States. Though the two sectors have traditionally been treated as…

This report is in a series examining the troubled history of for-profit higher education, from the problems that plagued the post-World War II GI Bill to the reform efforts undertaken by the George H. W. Bush administration to the regulatory relapse under George W. Bush. From President Dwight Eisenhower to President George H. W. Bush, Republican…

This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political…

The last several years has seen significant cuts to federal student aid funding to shore up the budget of the Pell Grant program, the primary source of government aid to low-income students. But in this paper, the author argues that there's a better way to keep the Pell Grant program viable: elimination of the American Opportunity Tax Credit and…

In education, reform tends to follow cycles, often bouncing from one extreme to another without considering the possibility of incorporating multiple perspectives simultaneously. Policies aimed at helping more underrepresented students enter college and complete degrees have bounced from one pole to another, embracing access as the primary goal…

This report describes patterns of continuity and change over time in four areas of the transition to adulthood among young adults as measured 2 years after their senior year of high school. The four areas are postsecondary enrollment, labor force roles, family formation, and civic engagement through voting or military service. The analysis…

Although there is extensive research pertaining to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), it is primarily framed around the U.S. federal definition of Hispanic Serving Institutions established by Title V of the Higher Education Act of 1965. This law identifies HSI as institutions that have a Hispanic student population of at least 25 percent and…

Almost 50 years ago, a New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) newsletter editorialized that "institutions of higher learning must not become devices to reverse our historic trend away from a class society. We should continue to open wider doors of opportunity for students of genuine ability without regard to (family) income." The…

As part of a series of hearings on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education convened a hearing in Chicago, Illinois, in order to hear the recommendations of those who work directly in higher education. The witnesses testified on students loans, the difference between grants and…

SINCE THE DEFICITS OF THE DISADVANTAGED INDIVIDUAL ARE USUALLY INDUCED BY HIS ENVIRONMENT, IT IS ONLY THROUGH A POSITIVE MANIPULATION OF HIS TOTAL ENVIRONMENT THAT THESE DEFICITS CAN BE REMOVED. DISADVANTAGED GROUPS LIVE IN A WORLD ISOLATED FROM THE CULTURAL MAINSTREAM AND ARE, THUS, ALIENATED FROM THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS AND FROM MIDDLE-CLASS…