Does Financial Aid Policy For Elite Colleges Trickle Down To Broad Access Colleges

The April 20 New York Times education section has a good article on the big change in financial aid policies for America"s most selective colleges. It clearly describes the major change to provide more grant money to the middle and lower income students. More low income students are getting a signal that they can go to these colleges,because the aid policies are easy to understand.
But the article also points out that very few students attend these colleges with incomes under $ 100,000, and the total enrollment of these schools is less than 5% of the overall college enrollment- eg 45% of students attend 2 year schools.
The conclusion at the end is my concern. it implies that what the elites do will drive the discussion for financial aid policies for broad access colleges that are open enrollment or non selective and where the low and middle income students go. I once thought this might be true , but after completing 10 years of research no longer think so. Pell grants and state merit scholarship programs are not influenced much by what Harvard, Stanford, Virginia,or Amherst do. -see http://bridgeproject.stanford.edu .

Labels: college information, student aid