Federal student financial aid awards as subsidies for higher education: What kinds of institutions are we supporting?

This paper attempts to shed light on the following question: What kinds of four-year institutions of higher learning benefit the most from federal student financial aid programs? We address this question by investigating how institutional quality, institutional mission, and the student's average net cost of attendance covary with average Pell grant, SEOG grant, GSL loan, and college work-study financial aid awards. Our sample is comprised of 254 nonproprietary four-year public institutions of higher learning and 499 nonproprietary four-year private institutions of higher learning.