Even as state spending on higher education was being propped up with federal stimulus money, states increased their amount of student financial aid by nearly 2 percent during the 2012 fiscal year, and used a larger share of that money for need-based aid than they had since 2003, according to an annual survey released on Monday.
While the total increase is relatively small, after adjusting for inflation, the survey reveals that many states shifted financial-aid dollars away from merit-based aid and nongrant aid, such as loan forgiveness and work-study, in order to spend more on grants based on financial need. And the data indicate that many states focused their financial aid on the neediest students, with 60 percent of the dollars going to families with incomes less than $40,000 annually.
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