Drawing on their analysis, the authors highlight some of the principal dimensions of policy choice on which the debate has focused, as well as some that have been relatively neglected. Building upon their conclusion that student aid works, they propose reforms that would bolster the role of income-tested aid in the overall student financing picture. McPherson and Schapiro recommend a number of incremental reforms that could improve the effectiveness of existing federal aid programs and present a proposal to replace a substantial fraction of state-operating subsidies to colleges and universities with expanded federal aid.
Michael S. McPherson is a coirector of the Williams project on the Economics of Higher Education and author of the College Board monograph, Selective Admission and the Public Interest (1990). McPherson, formerly a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Economics at Williams College and coeditor of the Journal of Economics and Philosophy. Morton Owen Schapiro is a codirector of the Williams project on the Economics of Higher Education and author of the College Board monograph, Selective Admission and the Public Interest (1990). Schapiro, professor of economics at Williams College, is the author of Filling Up America: An Economic-Demographic Model of the United States (1986).