Justin Draeger

“The House of Representatives is expected this week to back overhauling – and simplifying – how college students receive financial aid,” the Tri-City Herald reports. “Members of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators are divided on the bill’s merits. Justin Draeger, the organization’s vice president of public policy, likes the Pell Grant provisions. "Any investment we can make in Pell Grants is money well spent. There’s been irrefutable evidence that providing low-income families with these dollars year after year increases access to education," he said.

The full article is available online.

"An increase in the number of students seeking financial aid has prompted the University of Texas at Austin to phase out its multimillion-dollar National Merit Scholarship program starting next year so it can use the money for need-based scholarships," The Wall Street Journalreports. "Coming amid the recession and climbing college costs, the move by the state’s largest university could signal a renewed emphasis on need-based aid by the country’s colleges, experts said. Many schools have spent the past decade using scholarship money to attract high-performing students. ‘This gets back to equity in college — which should be the primary goal of student aid,’ said Justin Draeger, vice president of public policy at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators."

You can read the complete Sept. 2, 2009 Wall Street Journal article on-line.