Reinventing Financial Aid: Charting a New Course to College Affordability

In this provocative volume, two experts with very different points of view address the growing concern that student loan programs are not a sustainable solution to the problem of mounting college costs. They argue that the time has come to reform the financial aid system so that it is more effective in promoting college affordability, access, and completion.

Reinventing Financial Aid provides a thorough critique of the existing financial aid system and identifies the challenges of reform. It presents a host of innovations designed to improve grant and loan programs and the processes by which students access them. Pushing past current debates, it also challenges leaders to think more boldly about policy design, examine the assumptions and incentives embedded in the current system, and lay the groundwork for a fundamental rethinking of student aid programs.

While the editors agree that bold new thinking on financial aid policy is needed, they do not aim for consensus. Instead, they have leveraged their differences to flesh out important tensions, trade-offs, and areas of common ground that emerge from innovative approaches to reform. The result is a volume that serves as a counterpoint to the incremental approach to financial aid reform that has led to record tuition levels, growing student debt, and increasing doubts about the value of a college education.