Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Issues and Options
Published May 2003
Report summarizing relevant research, providing historical context, and offering an agenda of central issues that are most pressing to in higher education
This report provides a national “road map” to the nation’s most pressing higher education issues. The report summarizes relevant research, provides historical context, and offers an agenda of issues that authors expect to be central to the reauthorization process of the Higher Education Act (HEA). This unique, nonpartisan guide—the first and most extensive of its kind—evaluates 10 critical HEA policy issues facing the 108th Congress and the President. It analyzes HEA programs, pinpoints options for change, and weighs the resulting tradeoffs of those options. This report proceeds from the premise that providing access and success to postsecondary education is not only the principal goal of the HEA but also that expanding access and success is a legitimate and attainable goal for federal policy. Providing quality higher education for those who would not otherwise have such opportunities serves the public interest. The report is the product of over 18 months of analysis and discussion by a wide range of national higher education experts under the leadership of IHEP’s Senior Associate Thomas R. Wolanin, Ph.D.