The federal student aid system is a series of policies and programs that incorporates grants, loans, campus-based programs, and tax benefits aimed at increasing student access to higher education. The system is enormous in both scope and complexity. As more and more of America’s international competitors surpass the nation in terms of college graduates, the nation’s federal student aid system bears closer inspection to see how its outcomes can be improved.

There are a wide variety of stakeholders interested and invested in potential reform of the aid system, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently engaged more than a dozen organizations and charged them with examining how the system can be turned to focus on students’ postsecondary completion rather than just access.

Please join the Alliance for Excellent Education, the New America Foundation, and a number of other stakeholders on Thursday, February, 28, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (ET), for a Twitter town hall that will feature views and commentary from policymakers, researchers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. The conversation will focus on current problems with the federal student aid system and discuss the ways that these problems can be addressed.

To participate in the Twitter town hall, sign up for Twitter and tweet your thoughts using the hashtag #fixfinaid. The Alliance (@All4Ed), New America Foundation (@NewAmericaEd), and other moderators will keep the conversation going with questions, commentary, and retweets. To follow the conversation, use this link. The Alliance recommends free online applications like TweetDeck, which can be useful to follow both the #fixfinaid conversation as well as users’ interactions with other Twitter town hall participants.

Support for this webinar is provided in part by the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Please direct questions concerning the Twitter Town Hall to bdebaun@all4ed.org.