ABSTRACT
The federal government began to focus explicitly on college preparation, access, and degree completion only in the last half century, but federal involvement in higher education has a much longer history. Financial aid developed as a primary feature of federal higher education policy as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, but there were earlier federal roles in funding institutions, litigation about the public interest, and research funding. As an introduction to the problems for higher education created by shifts in political ideologies, we examine how political ideologies have infl uenced changes in federal policy over the past two centuries in institutional funding, court decisions and resulting regulation, funding for research, and federal fi nancial aid.1
