ly, this program provides support to the States for projects which will assist adults to obtain the basic skills (i.e.,

language and computation skills) necessary to function effectively

in an occupation.

Though no recent study of the Adult Education

Program has been done, a study reported on in 1973 indicated that adults show increases in such skills on an average of about one month's gain for each month of instruction. A needs assessment, reported on in 1976, indicated that there is a substantial unmet need for Adult Education. Finally, a survey of 43 States in 1977 indicated that there is a substantial projected savings to States (an average of about $868,000 per State when adult learners are able to relinquish public assistance.

Reducing Financial Barriers to Postsecondary Education

The primary goal of OE's postsecondary education programs is to enhance educational opportunity. The principal strategy in pursuit of this goal is

to provide funds for student assistance, both directly to students and indirectly through States and institutions of postsecondary education. The assumptions behind this strategy are that students should be aided first who are financially needy or disadvantaged and that students will bear some of the responsibility for financing their education. Total obligations for these programs administered by OE in FY 1977 were slightly more than $3.2 billion.

The forms of direct Federal student assistance administered by the Office of Education include grant programs (Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, State Student Incentive Grant), which provide nonreturnable aid ($2.21 billion in FY 1977); self-help programs (College

Work-Study, Cooperative Education, Guaranteed Student Loan, National

Direct Student Loan), which accounted for $1.05 billion in FY 1977 1/; and service programs (Talent Search, Upward Bound, Special Services to Disadvantaged

Students, Educational Opportunity Centers, and Legal Training for Disadvantaged), aimed at recruiting, counseling, and tutoring disadvantaged students both before and after they are enrolled in postsecondary education ($85 million in

FY 1977). Indirect assistance comes from institutional support programs, the largest of which was the Developing Institutions program, which accounted for $192 million in FY 1977. The following analysis focuses on the impact of student financial aid programs with particular emphasis on grant aid.

1/ This amount includes obligations only; actual loans made in FY 1977 under the Direct Loan and GSL Programs were in excess of a billion dollars.

The Impact of Student Assistance Programs

(1) Participation Rates

At the outset it should be made clear that while participation rates

are readily available and commonly employed measures of how young people are choosing among, gaining access to, and persisting in institutions of postsecondar education, they are not measures of the distribution of educational opportunity. Rather, they are measures of the results of young people's response to a number of education and noneducation variables. Differences in these rates by student or family characteristics (such as income, sex, ethnicity, or State of residence) should not by themselves be taken as evidence of

a lack of opportunity for access or as evidence that student aid programs are not having an important impact on educational opportunity.

Nonetheless, such rates describe important features of the context

in which the student aid programs operate.

Table I attempts to show where we are in access terms, using the participation rates based on preliminary tabulations of the high school class of 1974 surveyed in the spring of 1976.

Table I

1/ Other includes all other formal postsecondary training or schooling programs

The data in Table I indicate that participation in postsecondary study activities varies markedly with the level of family income. This variation is apparent whether viewed in terms of currently engaged (spring 1976) or ever-engaged participation rates. The difference in current participation between the lowest and highest income group is over 30 percentage points. Figure 1 graphically displays the current participation rate data of Table I for all types of institutions and compares these data to the mean participation rate for all income classes. As can be seen, the relationship between income and participation is striking.

The data in Table I and in Figure 1 also indicate that the increasing proportions engaged in postsecondary study activities at higher income levels are principally a function of increases in the 4-year college-going rates with income. For example, less than 25 percent of the lowest income groups attend 4-year institutions while over 50 percent of the highest income class falls into this category. These data also show it is much more probable that a low-income high school graduate will attend a vocational/technical type of institution than that a high-income student will. These general impressions with respect to choice of institutional type are also reflected in Table II, which shows the distribution of students by income and institutional type and includes only those members of the survey who are currently (spring 1976), or at some time after high school graduation, engaged in some form of postsecondary study.

Data in Table III indicate that it is somewhat more probable that a low income student will fail to complete a postsecondary program than