This investigation seeks to understand whether and how financial aid itself can serve to promote or impede progress towards college degrees among students from low-income families. It will identify ways of configuring financial aid policies to best promote low-income students' persistence and graduation rates. The project will address two key objectives:
(a) how students use and make sense of financial aid and
(b) how practitioners make sense of financial aid.

Both objectives align with the Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success Initiative and its emphasis on identifying when and why students are most apt to quit college and how to promote momentum towards completion.

The research will examine students attending colleges and universities across Wisconsin and will produce findings that can be generalized to low-income populations in other states and regions. The researchers will examine how students’ understandings and experiences of financial aid change over time, particularly as they depart from and return to college.

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