WASHINGTON – Achieving equity for low-income students in post-secondary education requires getting down to the nitty-gritty of what they need, and the Institute for Higher Education Policy provided a forum for that Tuesday with a summit featuring game-changing institutional leaders, the release of a special report and in-person perspectives of students who have overcome major finance-related obstacles on their way to a degree.
The six-hour summit at the Newseum, which drew educators, policymakers and other stakeholders from across the nation, included the unveiling of “The Cost of Opportunity: Student Stories of Affordability.” The 35–page report was the result of a comprehensive study by IHEP in which a diverse array of 17 low- and moderate-income college students were interviewed throughout two semesters of their college journeys to ascertain how their financial challenges could inform policies to promote affordability and completion.
Three key take-aways of the study were that the success of low-income and working-class students often is jeopardized because they are forced to make “unacceptable” decisions about how they will make ends meet; a confusing and complicated financial aid process causes great uncertainty about whether they will be able to afford school from semester to semester and year; and targeted need-based financial aid is crucial to helping these students overcome manifold affordability barriers that contribute to disparate outcomes.
The comprehensive report also made more than a dozen state, federal and policy recommendations, among them:
· State free-college programs should invest first in low-income students, expand to fund non-tuition school-related costs and support targeted need-based programs.
· Schools should establish funds that provide emergency grants to students, as often even a small one-time financial crisis can force a student to leave school and not return.
· Federal policymakers should adjust federal needs-analysis rules to allow for a negative family-estimated contribution in order to better account for true student need and direct more grant aid to the lowest-income Pell grant recipients.
