When Michael Birchett first started reading Satisfactory Academic Progress appeals as a financial aid administrator, he came across one student who was unable to attend class for an extended period due to a flat tire.
As someone who grew up in a middle-class family, he thought the reasoning was “silly” at first.
But, after noticing cars in neighborhoods with flat tires not moving for months, Birchett, the director of financial aid counseling and outreach at the University of Kentucky, realized not everyone has money on hand to fix those issues immediately.
This is just one example of implicit bias that can exist at the institutional level, said Birchett.
“If you don’t have very diverse groups of folks from different backgrounds or socioeconomic levels looking at things and being able to actually empathize with students, you are not really making very good appeal decisions for those students,” he said.
To mitigate the negative impact of implicit bias, specifically in college financial aid offices, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) published the “Implicit Bias Toolkit.”
The toolkit offers best practices to financial aid administrators to address biases in policies related to institutional forms, communication, cost of attendance, scholarships, student worker programs, verification and professional judgment.
