Aiding Students, Buying Students

From the first scholarship given to Harvard in 1643 to today's world of ""enrollment management"" and federal grants and loans, the author gives a lively social and economic history of the conflicting purposes of student aid. His research for this book is based on archives and interviews at 131 public and private institutions across the United States. In the words of Joe Paul Case, ""Wilkinson has mined the archives of dozens of institutions to create a mosaic that details the progress of student assistance from the 17th century to the present. He gives particular attention to the origins of need-based assistance, from the charitable benevolence of early colleges to the regulation-laden policies of the federal government. He gives due consideration to institutional motive - he challenges the egalitarian platitudes of affluent colleges and questions the countervailing market and economic forces that may imperil need-based aid at less competitive institutions. By drawing on scores of personal interviews and exchanges of correspondence with aid practitioners, Wilkinson fleshes out recent decades, helping the reader to understand new trends in the provision of aid.