Literature Review #2

Making Higher Education Affordable: Policy Design in Postwar America, by Patricia Strach

In her article, Patricia Strach discuses different policies which have been passed by congress to help make higher education affordable. She goes on to talk about the GI Bill, Work-Study program, Pell Grants and Hope and Lifetime credit.

She introduces when the need of these policies were first created. In 1943 due to the selective service act, which lowered the draft age to 19, many students had to enlist into the military causing them to drop out of college. When congress decided to raise the issue of helping its citizens attend college they were given the option of either helping everybody or only a portion of its population. “But faced with the opportunity to make higher education affordable to Americans generally or to please a specialized constituency, policymakers chose to provide very generous benefits to a narrow range of people. This decision would create a pattern of constituency-based aid that characterizes federal higher education programs still today.”(Strach 70)

Later in her article she states that by congress deciding to help only a select few, it set the limits for all future policies regarding affordable higher education. "In large part, what policymakers would propose in the years following the GI Bill was limited by the capacities already in place. Although policymakers looked to the GI Bill for inspiration, at no point was there any discussion of extending, modifying, or combining the GI benefits with the Higher Education Act, Pell Grants, or later tax expenditures.” (Strach 71)

All future policies that were created were new and based off of the GI Bill that it only targeted a select group of citizens, instead of helping the total population. "Respectively, the 1944 GI Bill effectively ended the possibility of a GI Bill for everyone. Creating aid for higher education for a particular group (veterans) administered by a specialized agency (VA) contributed to a patchwork quilt for educational aid, where future programs (like work-study. Pell Grants, and the Hope Scholarship) were added one piece at a time for a particular group administered by a specialized agency rather than expanding existing programs or formulating a comprehensive plan.”(Strach 70)
 
This article helps my research as it shows the several policies that have been passed by congress to help make higher education affordable. It helps me compare the GI Bill to several other policies and how over the years that only members who qualify for the GI Bill are helped more than those benefiting from other programs. 
Patricia Strach is an associate professor at University of Albany. She specializes in American politics and public policy. Her research examines the relationship between social and political institutions in American public policy

STRACH, PATRICIA. "Making Higher Education Affordable: Policy Design In Postwar America." Journal Of Policy History 21.1 (2009): 61-88. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.