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An examination of Florida statewide financial aid programs: Policy goals and outcomes

This dissertation reports an investigation of Florida's three largest student financial aid programs. The programs include the Florida Student Assistance Grant (FSAG), the Florida Undergraduate Scholarship Fund (FUSF), and the Florida Gold Seal Diploma (Gold Seal). This is the first study on the outcomes of the three programs as well as their cumulative impacts. The program costs have risen 252% between 1987-88 and 1991-92 and are expected to continue to grow. / The study relies on social investment theory which asserts that there are calculable social and economic benefits for postsecondary education (Bowen, 1977; Leslie and Brinkman, 1988). This study analyzes the 31,327 public community college and university recipients for the Fall, 1991 semester. / The findings demonstrated that FSAG is serving the most needy students which was its intent. There is little linkage to the merit based programs, however, which could provide a better prepared student for college attendance. / The FUSF program is meeting its twofold goals of encouraging more students to complete a rigorous college preparatory curriculum and also retaining high achieving students within Florida. The program is not adequately reaching minority groups nor poorer students. / The Gold Seal program is rewarding a more diverse ethnic and racial spectrum of students but it is in its first year of operation and its profile needs examination. The program looks promising both in terms of student composition as well as its inclusion of vocational-technical operations. / The cumulative analysis demonstrated that research universities are attracting 40% of the awards and 52% of the dollars. Community colleges gather 39% of the awards and a smaller 25% of the dollars. The community colleges show the greatest disparity between their share of the total enrollment (50%) and both the number of awards (39%) and proportion of dollars (25%). / Florida's financial aid programs are successful in terms of their individual policy objectives, however, they leave a large gap in meeting the needs of older, non-traditional citizens. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-07, Section: A, page: 2269. / Director: Louis W. Bender. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76657
ContributorsStryker, Laurey Tripp., Florida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText
Format131 p.
RightsOn campus use only.
RelationDissertation Abstracts International

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