The Study Of U.S. Federal Student Aid System

Today Chinese higher education has stepped into the stage of massification and an increasing number of students are entitled to benefiting from it. But as the recent financial reforms have converted higher education from originally completely free to all students sharing part of the expenses, the students in economic disadvantage are compelled into a more awkward situation and their rights for higher education are endangered. Under such circumstances, how to ensure this group of students enjoying the same opportunity for higher education as others has become the real concerns of the government and the society. In recent years the authorities have taken various measures and gradually established an all-round student aid system. But statistics shows that our present system still has some weaknesses and is capable of further improvements. In contrary, since the U.S. federal government stepped into the field of student aid after World War II, it has adopted a series of educational laws and set up a well-structured federal student aid system which is composed of various types of aid and enjoys the fame of high efficiency. The U.S. experience will offer us useful lessons on how to improve student aid in our country. The dissertation will focus on the U.S. federal student aid systems, its history, its present make-up, its operational mechanism and its development trends and try to illustrate the lessons we can draw from it.Prior to the main body of the dissertation, the introduction gives a brief account of the definition of student aid and its rationales. This part also shows why such a subject is chosen and how the study will be carried out.The main body of the dissertation consists of 4 parts. Part I mainly reviews the development of the U.S. federal student aid system in a historical perspective. After World War II, with the enforcement of a series of education laws such as the National Defense Law, the Higher Education Act of 1965, the 1972 Reauthorization of Higher Education Act, the Middle-Income Student Assistance Act , the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993, the U.S federal government has gradually set up a complete financial aid system. The system is based on student loans as its main aid form and supplemented by other forms of aid such as grants, scholarships, federal work-study programs and federal tax credits.Part II introduces the guiding principles and present composition of U.S. federal student aid system in detail. Furthermore, this part tries to illustrate the operational mechanism of the system by analyzing the sources of aid funds, the method to distribute aid money and the measures to ensure student loans recovery. The development history of the federal aid system shows the changes of its guiding principles. It is important to realize that the various principles are not contrary but consistent and supplemental to each other.Guided by various and coexisted principles, the federal aid system is composed of various types of aid, including gifted aid such as scholarships, grants, work-study programs and federal tax credits as well as different kinds of student loans. By means of law, the system is guaranteed to get sufficient fund. In addition, large numbers of measures are taken to ensure the safety, profitability and liquidity of student loan capital, thus attracting commercial banks to take part in the program. By means of strict aid application process and the congress method used to figure out student needs, fair distribution of aid fund is made possible. On various aspects of student loan recovery including grace period, repayment plans, loan deferment/ forbearance, loan discharge as well as possible punishments faced with by defaulters, explicit regulations are laid down and publicized to reduce the possibility of default occurrence, be it subjective or objective.Part III focuses on the development trends of the U.S. federal aid system. Statistics show that the federal government is investing an increasing amount of money in student aid and the proportion of federal aid to total aid is way up. In recent years, federal aid money makes up up to 67% of total aid money. It is also clear that more and more aids are taking the form of student loans rather than grants. Truly, more and more students benefit from the federal aid system but recent reforms in the system are more beneficial to the students coming from wealthy family instead of those really in economic need and increasing portion of federal aid is distributed as non-need-based aid.After giving a brief review of the development of student aid system in China, Part IV tries to point out the problems existing in today's student aid system of our country. Then the dissertation makes an effort to figure out some solutions in the light of experience drawn from the U.S. federal student aid system.The last part of the dissertation points out the findings and limitations of the study.Based on detailed study and analysis of the history, present and development trends of the U.S. federal aid system , the dissertation makes it clear that we can learn much from U.S. federal aid system, such as how to diversify aid guiding principles, obtain aid funds by various means, distribute aid money fairly and cut down default rate of student loans. In this aspect, there are some creative ideas.