The Story of the National Youth Administration and its Contribution to the History of Financial Aid

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Historical Perspectives on Teachers Unions, Financial Aid, and Military Training on University Campuses (Table 8)

Abstract

When sharing major milestones in financial aid in the United States, history mainly centers on three components: scholarships made through private foundations or wealthy families, the GI Bill, and the introduction of federal financial aid with the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965. However, one federal aid program is rarely mentioned in the literature and deserves more attention: the National Youth Administration (NYA). Created during the Great Depression as a result of Executive Order #7086, the NYA was a federally-funded program designed to solve youth unemployment experienced during the Great Depression. Through the NYA's college aid program, students were able to work to pay tuition and/or living expenses. This study looks at how institutions within the state of Texas utilized the NYA funding to create strategies to ensure affordability and aid low-income students from 1935 to 1943, offering an important corrective to the history of financial aid in the United States.

Author

• Tiffani Hoot, Baylor University