Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs

The Brookings Institution State Grant Aid Study Group has recently released a report providing several recommendations for existing state financial aid grant programs to improve both student access and completion.

In 2010-2011, states provided students with $9.2 billion in grant aid. These dollars represented 12% of state funding for higher education. At the same time that state support of higher education has in general been falling, the proportion of state dollars put towards grant aid has been rising. Since 1980-81, state dollars (adjusted for inflation) for grant aid have more than quadrupled, rising from $2.1 billion to $9.2 billion. Additionally, as a percentage of state funding for higher education, the percent of state aid for higher education spent on state grant aid has likewise risen, rising from 3.8% on 1980-81 to 11.7% in 2010-11.

At the center of its recommendations, the Brookings Institution State Grant Aid Study Group recommends moving away from the decades-old dichotomy of “need-based” aid versus “merit-based” aid and instead designing state aid programs to combine a focus on students with financial need with expectations and supports for student success and completion in higher education.  Additional recommendations include consolidating and simplifying the often multiple state grant programs to make the state aid programs more understandable and navigable for students and their families and reviewing and improving state aid programs to better function and withstand state financial downturns.

In addition, the report features an inventory of all state grant aid programs from the 2009-2012 academic year.