ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Higher Education Act of 1965

So, imagine you're a little kid and you want to learn something new, like how to ride a bike. You might ask your parents for help, and they might teach you using a special kids' bike with training wheels. But as you get bigger, you might want to learn more complex things, like how to do a backflip or ride a skateboard, and you'll need different teachers and tools to help you do that.

That's kind of like what the Higher Education Act of 1965 was all about. Before then, lots of people couldn't afford to go to college or get other kinds of advanced education. But the government wanted to help more people learn and grow and have better opportunities, so they created this law to make it easier for people to go to college or get other kinds of higher education.

The Higher Education Act did a lot of different things, but some of the most important were:

1. Giving money to colleges and universities to help them hire more teachers, build new buildings, and create new programs. This meant that more people could go to college and learn new things that they might not have been able to before.

2. Creating federal student loans and grants, which are like special kinds of money that the government gives to people so they can pay for college. These are loans that you have to pay back later, but they're special because they usually have low interest rates and flexible repayment options depending on your financial situation. This meant that more people could afford to go to college even if they didn't have a lot of money.

3. Making sure that everyone had equal opportunities to go to college, regardless of their race, gender, or other factors. Before the Higher Education Act, it was harder for some people to get accepted to colleges or to get the same quality of education as others. But the law made it so that colleges couldn't discriminate against people based on things like skin color or gender, and had to work harder to make sure everyone had equal access to the same opportunities and resources.

So, in short, the Higher Education Act of 1965 was a law that helped more people go to college and get other kinds of advanced education by giving money to schools, creating federal student loans and grants, and promoting equal opportunities for all.