All students should have access to an affordable and successful college experience. We offer recommendations to improve and simplify the financial aid system so that enrollment and full participation in college is possible for all students.

Rethinking Pell Grants

Goal: Develop recommendations for strengthening the Pell Grant program and increasing the benefits it provides to both students and society as a whole.

Convened by the College Board and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation, the Rethinking Pell Grants Study Group made recommendations for improving the Pell Grant program for young people growing up in low- and moderate-income families, while also better serving older adults returning to school to improve their labor market opportunities.

Publications

Rethinking Pell Grants (pdf, 1.5MB): Report. Presents the recommendations of the Rethinking Pell Grants Study Group for strengthening the Pell Grant program and increasing the benefits it provides both to students and to society as a whole.

Rethinking Pell Grants: In Brief (pdf, 1.4MB): Policy Brief. Provides an overview of the recommendations of the Rethinking Pell Grants Study Group. The group’s report outlines the following proposals designed to improve the program for young people growing up in low- and moderate-income families, while also better serving older adults returning to school to improve their labor market opportunities.

Rethinking Pell Grants: One Pager (pdf, 681KB): One pager. Provides an overview of the recommendations of the Rethinking Pell Grants Study Group. The group’s report outlines the following proposals designed to improve the program for young people growing up in low- and moderate-income families, while also better serving older adults returning to school to improve their labor market opportunities.

Rethinking Student Aid

Goal: Expand opportunities for those who face financial barriers to college enrollment and success, and increase both equity and efficiency of the federal investment in higher education.

Financial barriers prevent many qualified low- and moderate-income high school graduates from enrolling in four-year colleges. And for those who do enroll, their degree completion rates are low compared to their more affluent peers. We need a more effective financial aid system to increase college access and completion.

Publications

Study Group Members

Thomas Bailey, Director, Institute on Education and the Economy and Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

Sandy Baum, Executive Director, North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority

Steven E. Brooks, Executive Director, North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority

Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at UCLA

Georgette DeVeres, Associate Vice President/Admission and Financial Aid, Claremont McKenna College

Susan Dynarksi, Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Michigan

Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Director, Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI)

Carl F. Kaestle, Professor of Education, Brown University

Tom Kane, Professor of Education and Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Bridget Terry Long, Professor of Education and Economics, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Shirley A. Ort, Associate Provost and Director of Scholarships and Student Aid, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Marshall (Mike) Smith, Education Program Director, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

William Troutt, President, Rhodes College

Jane Wellman, Executive Director, Delta Cost Project

Admissions in the 21st Century: Archived Resources

Beginning in 2005, the College Board convened leaders of the admission, financial aid, enrollment management and school counseling communities to examine the current state of the profession and to develop ideas on how to improve the school-to-college transition. Below you will find archived resources from the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century, designed to address these values and action commitments.

Demographics

Members from the original Task Force and new collaborators convene at the Symposium on Admissions in the 21st Century in July 2012 to discuss progress to date, next steps and projects. Read The College Admission Landscape, 2012 for the landscape overview of admissions in the context of the key recommendations of the Task Force on Admissions in the 21st Century.

The task force developed a data book to use as a guide to the task force’s work and as a resource for the College Board’s Commission on Access, Admissions and Success in Higher Education. A comprehensive but not exhaustive review of data on several contemporary issues in American education, Selected Data on P-20 Education in America explores 10 significant indicators of our national educational health. It includes the best national evidence we could find on each of these indicators, such as global competitiveness, children’s well-being, student achievement, and high school and college graduation rates.

Diversity and Access

A research study conducted by the College Board Advocacy & Policy Center, Complexity in College Admission: The Barriers Between Aspiration and Enrollment for Lower-Income Students, explores the special challenges facing lower-income students as they navigate the school-to-college transition. Through telephone interviews with over 600 lower-income students and 100 of their parents, the research focuses on the questions of complexity in the college application process, barriers to applying or enrolling, and the issues or people that have the biggest influence on lower-income students’ decisions. There is also an Executive Summary of the report.

The report Complexity in College Admission: Fact or Urban Myth explores the topic of complexity in the admission process. Through a survey of approximately 1,000 students and parents who had recently undergone the college application process, the research focuses on questions of transparency in the application process, overall perceptions of applying, parent experiences in securing good information about college choice, and the review process.

Learn more about the work of the Commission on Access, Admissions and Success in Higher Education in the report Coming to Our Senses: Education and the American Future.

Strategic Planning, Organization, and Leadership

The task force examined a broad range of issues and looked for ways in which the College Board,

in collaboration with its members, could contribute to solutions that would best serve students as they prepare for, apply to and enroll in postsecondary institutions. In its report, entitled Preserving the Dream of America: An Open Letter to Professionals in Admissions, Financial Aid and Counseling, the task force begins by articulating the values that underlie the profession and then proposes a set of actions to support these values and guide the profession into the 21st century.