Shifts in federal financial aid policies over the past two decades have made college attendance increasingly difficult for the nation's poorest students. Furthermore, once these students do enroll, they lag far behind their more economically advantaged peers in graduation rates. Because financial aid increasingly emphasizes loans over grants, many poor students are leaving college with debt and no degree, worse off financially than when they arrived. Compounding the problem are changes in the federal tax code giving tax credits and deductions to support higher education that apply to few low-income families. In the face of these troubling developments, a number of strategies for supporting poor students are available to educators. Adam Howard, who has researched ways to support poor students once they enroll, recently talked with Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, about the barriers that poor students face before and during college and what educators can do to help overcome them. This article presents their conversation. (Contains 2 notes.)