Improving Access to Higher Education

This chapter introduces and examines major program decisions for student loans from 1965 through 2015. It begins with an examination of the influence of politics and policy knowledge on the Higher Education Act (HEA) and then analyzes the impact of these factors on student loan programs through five eras and twenty one major program decisions. It considers ideology, interests, institutions, and policy knowledge, finding relatively stable patterns of their influence on each decision. Most decisions focused on implementation strategies, considered relevant policy knowledge, and resulted in changes within a set purpose and program design. This suggests that program goals and design established in the original act had long-lasting implications. In one case, however, policy knowledge exposed concerns about core design elements and was eventually leveraged to support comprehensive changes to the program. The chapter shows how these changes subsequently shaped the balance among political factors and policy knowledge influencing future decisions.