ABSTRACT
The largest category of federal financial support to higher education is student aid, amounting to $10.3 billion or 47.4 percent of total federal postsecondary education expenditures in fiscal year 1985. Clearly, student aid has overshadowed traditional forms of federal government financial support to higher education. Additional middle-class eligibility for Federal Pell Grants came about as a result of the 1992 Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization. Home equity was permanently excluded from means testing, as were significant amounts of farm and family business assets. As the 1990s began, Congress and the administration turned toward the task of reauthorizing the HEA. Support for higher education, along with all other federal programs, is bound to receive continued close scrutiny. On a larger scale, academic administrators must begin to ponder the issue of how dependence on federal student aid monies has opened the door for significant federal regulation of academic and administrative matters hitherto the province of individual institutions.
