U.S. Panel Criticizes Brookings Report on State Student Aid

A recent report calling on states to target their financial aid to students with financial need but set expectations and support for college success has come under criticism from the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, a federal panel that advises Congress. In a statement, the federal panel says that the Brookings Institution report released this month (and described by its authors in an Inside Higher Ed essay here) would, if followed, result in states developing many different approaches that link grants to differing measures of on-time enrollment, rejecting "the longstanding, widely-shared goal of an integrated and consistent federal-state partnership in need-based grant aid." The proposal would also reduce grant aid for the "students most at risk in institutions with the least resources to support those students." The authors of the Brookings report said they believed the advisory panel's members had misinterpreted their recommendations.