The Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery (RADD) project seeks to identify and develop innovative postsecondary financial aid solutions that ensure continued access while also increasing success for low-income students.
In the first phase of the RADD project, IHEP published a white paper, Making Sense of the System: Financial Aid Reform for the 21st Century Student, which offers near-term and long-range recommendations to better direct and leverage the federal aid system toward greater college attainment. Synthesizing input from a diverse set of thought leaders representing the business, higher education, civil rights, and public policy sectors, the paper also offers a framework of principles to guide decisions on financial aid policies by carefully weighing the benefits and consequences of reform.
In the second phase of the RADD project, IHEP participated in the Simplification and Transparency Consortium and the Loans Consortium. In the first group, several organizations joined together to explore ways to simplify the college admissions and aid process to make it more transparent and equitable, including the use of better data to help students, policymakers, and institutions make more informed postsecondary decisions. IHEP’s paper, Mapping the Postsecondary Data Domain: Problems and Possibilities, is a product of this effort and represents the Institute's research and recommendations to improve existing national data systems. Consortium partners included: Center for Law and Social Policy, College Board, Institute for Higher Education Policy, National College Access Network, New America Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and Young Invincibles.
As part of the Loans group, IHEP worked with a consortium focused on reforming the federal income-based repayment program. In particular, the group explored scenarios in which an automatic income-based repayment system could work for all stakeholders as discussed in the resulting white paper, Automatic for the Borrower: How Repayment Based on Income Can Reduce Loan Defaults and Manage Risk. The consortium members included: HCM Strategists, Institute for Higher Education Policy, National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), New America, and Young Invincibles.
In the current phase of the RADD project, IHEP leads the Postsecondary Data Consortium, which engages key communities—institutions, students/consumers, and workforce leaders—to explore issues of data presentation and use, data collection and reporting (including burden), and public and political will for refining existing data systems or developing new ones. Consortium members are convening critical conversations with their constituents and will distill the outcomes of the critical conversations into individual briefs/products. The issues identified by each stakeholder group will help to inform a joint paper outlining the consortium’s top-line findings and recommendations. Through these efforts, the consortium will share, validate, and refine its RADD II recommendations to improve postsecondary data in support of broader financial aid reform goals and to offer additional policy opportunities. Consortium members include: Center for Law and Social Policy, National College Access Network, New America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and Young Invincibles.