Dive Brief:
- In the zero-sum game of financial aid awards, colleges that recruit wealthy students with non-need-based aid have less to give students whose families can’t afford college without it.
- A newly released report from New America examined how much 1,400 colleges ask low-income families to pay toward tuition, finding hundreds expect those who earn $30,000 or less to pay more than half of their income toward this bill, according to U.S. News & World Report.
- The portion of public colleges expecting their lowest-income students to pay more than $10,000 per year has gone from about one-third to nearly half since the 2010-11 school year, and New America finds some schools reduce their own aid for Pell-eligible students in response to the government grants.
Dive Insight:
Competition, state disinvestment in higher education, and losses from the Great Recession have all contributed to the difficult financial position many institutions find themselves in. Virtually all state flagships have increased their enrollment of out-of-state students, who pay more in tuition, building on a “merit-based financial aid arms race” as schools like the University of Wisconsin-Madison compete for its state’s most talented with the University of Iowa or Illinois, for example.
At a time when access to education is seen as a national goal and student debt is being looked at as an impending crisis, lower-income students are being left out in the cold. But as noble as an institution’s goals may be, they have to balance the books somehow. Vassar College has been among those held up as models for recruiting low-income students and finding the money to make their education’s possible.