For 40 years, promoting financial access to higher education for all deserving students has been a key plank in the nation's education platform. According to the College Board, the federal government annually provides more than $90 billion in student aid and higher-education benefits. State governments provide an additional $6.8 billion each year in direct aid to college students.

Despite this enormous investment of public resources, financial barriers to higher learning persist for many academically qualified low-income students. In its February 2001 report, Access Denied, the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance discloses that college-entry and participation rates of lower-income students continue to lag far behind rates for middle- and upper-income students. The report indicates that this gap between the college-participation rates of lower- and upper-income students remains at approximately the same level as it was more than 30 years ago.

The Advisory Committee identifies the following factors that contribute to the persistence of financial barriers to higher education for lower-income students:

• College affordability for middle-income families and merit-based aid initiatives have displaced financial access as the focus of federal, state and institutional policy.

• This shift in policy priorities has produced a steep increase in the unmet financial need (the cost of attendance minus the family's contribution toward college expenses and all awarded financial aid) of low-income students.

• In response to excessive unmet financial need, low-income students often must attend school part time, work long hours and borrow heavily to finance higher education. These responses lower the probability that these students will complete their degrees.

The Advisory Committee warns that, unless remedial steps are taken, the nation could face a higher-education-access crisis during the next 15 years. Access Denied recommends the following changes in federal policy to avert this crisis:

• Reinstate the longstanding goal of federal student-aid policy to promote financial access to higher education for all academically prepared low-income students.

• Increase need-based grant aid for low-income students.

• Reaffirm student-aid programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act as the nation's long-term solution to solving the higher-education access problem.

• Rebuild partnerships between federal and state governments and postsecondary institutions to leverage and target financial aid to low-income students.

Although the recommendations of the Access Denied report primarily are directed to government policy makers, USA Funds^® has adopted the report's conclusions as the basis for a new, more holistic approach to its support of higher-education access.