Financial award letters from colleges often are so unclear or misleading that students and their families don’t get an accurate picture of the full cost of schooling and just how much money they will have to ante up on their own.
That’s the conclusion of a team of New America and uAspire researchers after a quantitative analysis of 11,000 actual award letters received by Class of 2016 seniors from194 high schools across the nation, and a qualitative analysis of 515 of those letters.
In a report released Wednesday titled “Decoding the Cost of College: The Case for Transparent Financial Aid Award Letters,” authors from the Washington, D.C.-based New America think tank and Boston-based nonprofit uAspire outlined seven major findings:
Additionally, 36 percent of the financial award letters – more than 1 in 3 – from the 515 schools more closely analyzed provided no cost information at a time when rising college costs and skyrocketing student loan debt are topics of national debate.
A result of these college practices is that many students don’t realize before they start college whether they can afford the school, how much money they must personally come up with to meet all costs, and that they may not even have enough money to finish their education.
Consistent and clear communication about financial aid is important to students because awards usually don’t cover all costs. For example, study researchers found that even with a maximum Pell grant, the average recipient still had to come up with almost $12,000 – regardless of cost-saving choices such as a public school instead of private or living off-campus rather than in school-run housing.
“Students and families confront a detrimental lack of information and transparency when making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives: paying for college,” the report said.
