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In response to goals of expanding access as well as public pressure to leverage substantial endowment resources toward increasing affordability, numerous elite colleges have enacted policies aimed at improving access and affordability by replacing student loans with grants in financial aid packages. No-loan policies, however, differ in the extent to which they expand affordability: Some policies offer a universal discount by replacing loans with grants for all aid-eligible students, while others offer narrowly targeted discounts to students based on income, Pell Grant eligibility status, or another means-tested threshold. We leveraged newly available Equality of Opportunity Project Mobility Report Card data and a difference-in-differences design using unweighted and weighted comparison groups to examine the relationship between adoption of universal and targeted no-loan policies and economic diversity at elite colleges. We found that colleges offering universal discounts experienced increased enrollment among middle-class students. Our study indicates universal no-loan policies represent one strategy to increase access and affordability for the middle-class in the elite reaches of higher education. The study also, however, raises questions about the policies' effectiveness in addressing access for low-income students and efficiency in targeting aid.

The test-optional movement in the United States emerged largely in response to criticism of standardized admissions tests as inadequate and potentially biased measures of postsecondary promise. Although anecdotal reports suggest that test-optional policies have improved campus diversity, empirical research has not yet confirmed this claim. Consequently, this study employs quasi-experimental techniques to assess the relationship between test-optional policy implementation and subsequent growth in the proportion of low-income and minority students enrolling at adopting liberal arts colleges. It also examines whether test-optional policies increase institutional standing through greater application numbers and higher reported Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. Results show that, on average, test-optional policies enhance the perceived selectivity, rather than the diversity, of participating institutions.

As many national commissions and observers have noted, the past forty years have brought unprecedented declines in humanities enrollments and programs in U.S. higher education. These changes are particularly striking in the iconic academic heart of the enterprise, the four-year college sector, where many institutions have diversified curricular offerings well beyond their historic roots in the liberal arts. Colleges have significantly varied, however, in the extent of their retreat from the traditional core curriculum. What factors, then, are associated with maintaining earlier established academic norms in this organizational field? This analysis of four-year colleges' humanities degree production investigates several propositions, concluding that deeper institutionalization and stronger financial resources have been especially important in constraining schools' retreat from the humanities over recent decades. Examination of time-based interaction effects suggests notable evolution in the role of religious affiliation and gender in humanities degree production over the period. Implications of the findings for research and policy are considered.

Postsecondary undermatch occurs when students fail to enroll at a college or university that possesses a level of selectivity their academic credentials would permit them to attend. Given the demonstrated link between selective college attendance and postsecondary and professional attainment, recent studies have attempted to examine which factors may prevent students from enrolling at appropriately competitive institutions. Using data provided by NCES's Educational Longitudinal Survey (ELS:2002/2006), this study aims to quantitatively assess whether results yielded from these studies generalize to a national level, and whether other contextual variables play a significant role. Descriptive results show that postsecondary undermatch is indeed a pervasive phenomenon, but not as widespread as previous studies have claimed; while multilevel analysis suggests that background, environment, and college-related attitudes have significant influence on the likelihood of undermatch.

Despite record student debt and the growing importance of graduate education, little is known about what drives graduate student borrowing. In response to that research gap, this study draws on several national data sources to analyze the patterns and predictors of education-related debt among graduate students specifically. Adjusted Wald tests show that borrowing among graduate students has increased in recent years, particularly at the master's and doctoral level, while multilevel tobit analysis suggests that several demographic, discipline-related, and institution-level variables exert significant influence on cumulative graduate debt.

School counselors are the primary facilitators of college transition for many students, yet little is known about their influence on college-going behavior. Analyzing data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study employs coarsened exact matching and multilevel modeling to examine the effects of student-counselor visits on postsecondary enrollment, as well as determine whether the effects of such visits vary by socioeconomic background. Results suggest that visiting a counselor for college entrance information has a positive and significant influence on students' likelihood of postsecondary enrollment, and that counseling-related effects are greatest for students with low socioeconomic status.