One Axis at a Time?: The Intersectional Failure of American Higher Education Aid Policy

Higher education is widely sold to Americans as the surest path to economic mobility, yet for many students, that path narrows long before a degree is in hand. This reality is often treated merely as a funding problem, when in fact it is a design problem. In this paper, I describe how federal aid policy has consistently defined educational disadvantage along a single axis. Drawing on Kimberlé Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality as a method of analysis, I trace this single-axis pattern through three foundational policies—the GI Bill, the Higher Education Act and its Pell Grant, and the FAFSA. I then evaluate two multi-axis interventions, CUNY ASAP and Georgia State University, whose responses to compounding barriers yielded substantial gains in completion across diverse backgrounds. By incorporating evidence from federal data, randomized controlled trials, and institutional outcomes, I argue that federal policy must be redesigned at two levels: an aid formula that recognizes wealth and caregiving and an institutional funding structure that rewards demonstrated mobility for disadvantaged students.