Nearly fifty years ago, the federal government committed itself to removing the financial barriers that prevent low-income students from enrolling in and completing colleges. For years, colleges complemented the government's efforts by using their financial aid resources to open the doors to the neediest students. But those days appear to be in the past.

Mention online learning in higher education and the conversation quickly turns to the explosion of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, and the opportunities for delivering quality education to the greatest number of students. Indeed, online learning is increasingly becoming a permanent fixture in higher education. But the nation’s public higher education system--the two-year colleges and four-year universities that educate the large majority of all college students--has been visibly slower to embrace the potential of online education.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The federal financial aid system is no longer up to today’s demands. Built in a different era, its haphazard evolution over the decades has made it inefficient, poorly targeted, and overly complicated. With the need for higher education never greater and college growing increasingly unaffordable, students deserve a streamlined aid system that is more understandable, effective, and fair.

In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama urged Congress to change the federal student loan program’s existing Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, which caps borrowers’ payments at 15 percent of their incomes and forgives any remaining debt after 25 years of payments. He argued that high college tuition was an untenable burden for the middle class, and that by reducing payments to 10 percent of a borrower’s income and providing loan forgiveness after 20 years of payments, lawmakers could provide borrowers with relief.