Challenges in Accessing Financial Aid

📢 Shining a Light on Support for Older Students and Student Parents 🎓👨👩👧👦 Federal and state financial aid programs, along with public benefits, play a pivotal role in the lives of older students and those juggling the responsibilities of parenthood. I'm excited to share a report that delves deep into this crucial topic with my coauthors Ivy Love, Edward Conroy, & Sarah Sattelmeyer. 📘 Read the full report “We Shouldn’t Have to Choose between Maintaining and Bettering Our Lives”: An Analysis of Older and Parenting College Students here: https://lnkd.in/gd-jZFsm   This comprehensive report examines the performance of federal financial aid, state financial aid, and federal public benefits programs across four diverse states: Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas. The analysis provides critical insights into how these programs are functioning and assesses the level of support older students and student parents receive. Key findings include:  ▶ Across the board, students who are 24 and over and student parents are less likely to receive state grant aid than they are to receive a Pell Grant, even when they have financial need that will make it difficult for them to afford to go to college. ▶ In all four states we examined, even the most financially needy older students are not able to access many of the state aid programs available. ▶ Even more alarming: In both two-year and four-year colleges in all four states, a substantial share of the most financially needy students receive no grants at all. ▶ Older students and student parents attending four-year colleges were more likely to receive state aid than those attending community colleges. In addition to financial aid programs, the report also delves into the design and policies of states' public benefit programs, offering a firsthand view of the challenges faced by these students as they navigate the system meant to support them in their educational journey. The report concludes with recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders aiming to design or reform state financial aid and safety net programs. These recommendations aim to improve access and support for older students and student parents, ensuring they have equal opportunities to pursue higher education. #HigherEducation #FinancialAid #StudentParents #EducationSupport #PolicyAnalysis #EquityInEducation Take a moment to read the report and share your thoughts. Together, we can make a positive impact on the lives of these determined individuals striving for a brighter future! 🌟📚

There's lots of attention on this year's FAFSA rollout (which is a train wreck), but colleges can also do better to help students and families understand the costs of attending their institutions. Net Price Calculators are required, but aren't reviewed for accuracy. This year, my colleagues found NPCs using Cost of Attendance data several years out of date (the worst being a community college using costs from 2017). NPCs often ask bare minimum financial questions and produce results that are so far off that they can't really be considered estimates. (The results mentioned in the article were almost 20% lower than the actual cost.) There is no standardized financial aid letter format. Which means families have to create their own spreadsheets to compare, hunting up numbers that ought to be listed, but often aren't (like major specific required fees). And this is only possible if a family know they have to read between the lines and find definitions for terms like "Fed Unsub L" (which probably refers to a Federal Unsubsidized Loan -- which has to be paid back with interest). As Jessica Chermak, LPC, CEP mentions in the column, this is something that legislation like the Understanding the True Cost of College Act. This type of reform, to help families understand what they are committing to pay, deserves bipartisan support. IECA Independent Educational Consultants Association National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)

Why are financial aid award letters so confusing for students and parents? A report from the US Government Accountability Office found that 91% of colleges either don’t include a net price (the price of college after financial aid is included) or understate the net price in their financial aid award letters. Another analysis from New America and uAspire found that out of 455 colleges that offered an unsubsidized student loan, there were 136 different, unique terms for that loan. These inconsistencies hurt students and parents who are simply trying to figure out how much college will cost and how to pay for it.   When I was a high school counselor comparing financial aid award letters was one of the toughest parts of the job. So why is this so confusing? One big reason is that colleges are not required by federal law to provide standardized financial aid award letters to students. However, this may be changing... A recently introduced bill, H.R. 6951 or The College Cost Reduction Act aims to address this issue. One of the key parts of this bill is to provide a standardized financial aid award letter across colleges. This way, all students would have access to clear, consistent information on their financial aid award. Until then we’ve created a simple tool to help students compare financial aid across multiple colleges (I’ll include the link to this in the comments). And if you want to go deeper on the research from GAO and New America/UAspire, I included those links in the comments too!

“This stuff is very close to my heart - and this year has been heartbreaking,” Susan Dynarski tells me in the latest episode of #HigherEdSpotlight, which is devoted to the disastrous launch of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. Sue is an economist, the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a prominent scholar who focuses on reducing inequality in education. She explains in characteristically plainspoken terms why FAFSA got so complicated in the first place. And she describes how the ambitious overhaul, aimed at simplification, went so badly wrong, resulting in a significant drop in applications from students from low-income families. Sue has studied college financial aid for years. She makes the case that the best solution to preserve and expand college access is to use tax data to streamline the aid process - which could mean, as she says in the clip below, eliminating the FAFSA altogether. Listen to the full episode here 👉 http://tiny.cc/1iyuzz 🎧

College counselor and student advocate Danny Tejada has been doing a "countdown to FAFSA" series on his LI profile. Aside from it bringing some levity to the situation, he's highlighting a huge problem: the FAFSA (the free application for federal student aid) is STILL not yet open. The FAFSA has been touting it's simplified redesign for months. Originally they said it would be ready in December, then by Dec 31, then last week we got a message that even when it does open, it's a "soft launch" for some unspecified period of time. Colleges won't get the data until "later in January" and the soft launch will included "temporary pauses" to form access and "waiting rooms" when demand is high. This is a mess. And it makes an already complicated and hard to access higher education system EVEN MORE COMPLICATED AND HARD TO ACCESS. For so many families, the most stressful part of this process is not choosing where to apply, writing essays, or waiting for college decisions. Which are all extremely stressful. It's figuring out how to pay for college. For those of you who say "the system is broken," I have a more radical take for you: the system is working exactly the way its supposed to. With all of the hurdles, complications, mysteries, dollar signs, and moving parts, it is keeping certain people out. (rant over)