Students fail to pursue college aid
The Legislative Analyst and others make a strong case that fees at the state’s community colleges, currently the lowest in the nation, should be raised to provide more revenue for the system. But this should happen only if the state plowed back some of the money to hire more college financial aid officers and guidance counselors in high school.
A study released this week by the Berkeley-based Institute for College Access and Success underscored that need. As many as a half-million community college students are failing to apply for federal Pell Grants. They’re losing out on as much as a half-billion dollars in aid.
Only one-third of California community college students seek federal financial aid, compared with 46 percent of community college students in other states, the institute found. Many students are turned off by the complicated federal college financial form, known as FAFSA. And others don’t know that federal Pell grants will pay for books, transportation and living expenses, as well as fees, up to about $5,350 per year.
Community colleges budget $40 per student to provide information on financial aid and help fill out forms, compared with $77 per student at the California State University and $165 at the
University of California. Some students give up trying after seeing the lines in the financial aid offices.
California high schools have the lowest numbers of college counselors – 1 per 1,000 students – than any state. One high school district in San Jose is proposing to lower that to 1:2000 students next year.
The community college system has a simple and generous fee waiver for low-income families. If fees were raised from $26 per credit to$40 per credit, as the LAO recommends, the trustees would waive that additional money, too.
But 250,000 current community college students who haven’t sought the waiver could get it if they applied through FAFSA. And an additional quarter million students could qualify for additional financial aid as well.
Gov. Schwarzenegger is proposing again this year to eliminate Cal Grant’s competitive grant program that has funded 22,500 students, three quarters of them at community colleges. The Legislature wisely has shown no interest in doing so.
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
The FAFSA is designed for adults to fill out — it requires knowledge of family finances. My son, a freshman at Oberlin, would not have been able to do it without major parental input (though he didn’t do it; we did). It’s a Catch-22 to expect students who don’t have parental support to complete it.
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Heck the FAFSA is difficult and time consuming for adults with great degree backgrounds (I am an Oberlin grad)… my husband had a hard time filling it out based on our family of four. This year’s is a little better, but the form is quite long. Most of the students that I know at the local community college where I tutor are quite intimidated, and most are on their own — so the FAFSA is completely irrelevant anyway. Its difficult for many to imagine, but huge swathes of students are kicked out within a month or so of high school graduation and left to fend for themselves. The FAFSA doesn’t take that into account.
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