Early Awareness of College Financial Aid: Does It Expand Choice?

Abstract

The historic goals of student financial aid have been to promote access and choice. Flint argues that, in the strongest sense of the word, <i>choice</i> should mean an expansion of the observed level or range of tuitions in colleges. He estimated a causal model of the influence of the awareness of financial aid programs on college choice using a sample of 823 Illinois parents. Path analysis results showed that college savings and awareness of financial aid possibilities had significant indirect effects on tuition levels in the colleges under consideration.