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.

The Alliance for Excellent Education, the New America Foundation, and a number of other stakeholders held a Twitter town hall that featured views and commentary from policymakers, researchers, students, parents, and other stakeholders. The conversation focused on current problems with the federal student aid system and discussed the ways that these problems can be addressed.

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