Education Commons^™

“I Don’T Even Know What That Is”: Deprivation, Censorship, And Responsibility In Administering The Pell Grant In Prison, Erin L. Castro, Cydney Y. Caradonna, Mary R. Gould

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The violence of incarceration creates greater responsibility for higher education administrators in supporting students who are in prison. Using focus group data with incarcerated students and formerly incarcerated alumni who participated in or are actively participating in Second Chance Pell, we explore their perceptions and understandings of the Pell Grant and eligibility for the Pell Grant, including lifetime eligibility used limits. Through a lens of Witnessing, we argue that deprivation and censorship of information negatively influence students’ access to accurate and timely information about federal student aid and their ability to fully participate in the process. Accordingly, college and university …

Indebted To My Education: Examining College Graduates’ Perceptions Of Student Loan Repayment, Vincent D. Carales, Mauricio Molina

Journal of Student Financial Aid

In this paper, we examine college graduates’ perceptions of entering student loan repayment and how they navigated this process. Findings highlight the importance of helping students make informed borrowing decisions, particularly as they begin repaying their student loan debt. Policy makers wishing to hold institutions accountable for keeping college affordable while enhancing financial aid policy will gain further insight.

Predicting International Student Enrollment By Institutional Aid: A Random And Fixed Effects Approach, Daniel C. Posmik

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Since the fall semester of 2016, first-time international student enrollment (ISE_ft) has declined at U.S. colleges and universities. This trend disrupts a steady upwards trajectory of ISE_ft rates. Previous research has demonstrated that various political, social, and macroeconomic factors influence the number of international students studying in the U.S. Exploiting data from the Common Data Set (CDS), I focus on the role financial aid plays as an enrollment predictor for international undergraduate students. A fixed effects model reveals that financial aid is strongly and significantly predictive of ISE_ft, yielding a 1.8% enrollment increase per 10% …

Is The Early Promise Of Money Enough? Examining High School Students’ College Knowledge And Choice In A Promise Scholarship Program, Tangela Reavis

Journal of Student Financial Aid

This study is part of a randomized control trial examining the results of a promise scholarship program, the Degree Project (TDP). Half of the ninth graders in one Midwestern urban school district were notified about a $12,000 promise scholarship offer if they met certain GPA and attendance requirements (2.5 GPA and 90% attendance). This analysis draws on interview data to understand students’ financial knowledge over four years (grades 9-12). The study examined how treatment students (those who were offered the scholarship) and control students (those who were not offered the scholarship) explained and understood the methods they intended to use …

Fafsa And Beyond: How Advisers Manage Their Administrative Burden In The Financial Aid Process, Meredith S. Billings, Ashley B. Clayton, Rachel Worsham

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Access to financial aid is crucial in ensuring that students can afford college. Students must file the FAFSA to access federal financial aid and usually the FAFSA is also required for state and institutional aid (U.S. Department of Education, n.d). Prior research has shown, however, that the FAFSA is complicated and burdensome to complete and often acts as a barrier instead of an entry point to college (Bettinger et al., 2012; Bird & Castleman, 2016; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2006, 2008; Dynarski et al., 2013). Given these barriers in accessing aid, some high schools employ college advisers or other school staff …

The Lasting Effects Of The Pandemic On Graduate And Professional Education, Robert Kelchen

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The coronavirus pandemic caused a shift in the American higher education system. Many institutions switched from in-person to virtual platforms. Since graduate and professional students are more likely than undergraduate students to enroll in a hybrid or online program, they were less affected by the transition to online education. However, the decrease in undergraduate enrollment during the pandemic further squeezed institutional finances showing a decline in international graduate enrollment in the United States. As universities place additional scrutiny on program finances, departments will face pressure to reduce the number of assistantships that are not supported by external grants and contracts, …

Centering The Marginalized: The Impact Of The Pandemic On Online Student Retention, Joshua Travis Brown, Joseph M. Kush, Frederick A. Volk

Journal of Student Financial Aid

During the pandemic, much of the focus of administrators and scholars has been on its impact on residential students and the sudden shift to online instruction. While justified, researchers have yet to focus on online students—who often represent marginalized communities in higher education—to ask whether they were impacted by factors related to the pandemic other than the modality shift. In this study, we examined how the first-year retention of online students was affected during the pandemic, and whether it differed from first-year residential students who transitioned online. We examined records of two student cohorts (Fall 2017 and Fall 2019) from …

The Impacts Of Covid-19 On The Experiences Of Students With Basic Needs Insecurity: Evidence From A National Survey, Allyson Cornett, Carla Fletcher

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected college students’ basic needs, financial security, academic success, caregiving responsibilities, mental health, and more, according to the Fall 2020 Student Financial Wellness Survey (SFWS) conducted by Trellis Company. Researchers surveyed 37,936 students at 62 two- and four-year colleges and universities from October to November 2020 and found 53 percent (n=20,095) indicated one or more forms of basic needs insecurity (BNI). This brief examines data from students with BNI with a special lens on their mental health, familial responsibilities and finances, employment, and financial security. These results highlight the disparate impacts of the pandemic among basic …

Who Do College Students Turn To For Financial Aid And Student Loan Advice, And Is It Advice Worth Following?, Casandra E. Harper, Lisa Scheese, Enyu Zhou, Rajeev Darolia

Journal of Student Financial Aid

In this article, we examine the sources of information that college students turn to as they make decisions related to financial aid and student loans. Based on interview data from 25 undergraduate students from one public, four-year institution, our results reveal a great amount of variation in the number and nature of sources on which students rely. Across nearly all cases, students believed their access to assistance to be insufficient. This was true even for students with parents who attended college—commonly considered to be a high-quality source of support for students, when available—as students often found their advice outdated, confusing, …

Hidden Inequality: Financial Aid Information Available To College Students With Disabilities Attending Public Four-Year Institutions, Emily L. Perlow, Ryan S. Wells, Mujtaba Hedayet, Jenny Xia, Heather Maclean, Emily Ding, Angela Mccall

Journal of Student Financial Aid

College students with disabilities often encounter systems and processes that do not serve them well. Financial aid, structured in ways that can be particularly burdensome to students with disabilities, is one such system. This study used web-based content analysis of the largest public four-year institution in each state to explore how institutions explain and provide information and resources related to financial aid and whether they are equitable, consistent, and useful for students with disabilities specifically. The findings suggest that available information most often does not assist students in understanding how their disability-related needs can be supported or hindered by financial …

Factors Associated With Parent And Student Debt Of Bachelor’S Degree Recipients, Robert Kelchen

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Parent PLUS loans are a growing concern due to their limited income-driven repayment protections and their potential to maintain longstanding racial wealth gaps. Previous research has examined factors associated with student debt burdens of college graduates, but no research has examined factors related to parent borrowing for college. In this brief, I use newly-released College Scorecard data to explore student and institutional characteristics associated with federal student loans and Parent PLUS loans of two recent bachelor’s degree cohorts. I find meaningful differences in how certain characteristics are associated with student and parent debt, particularly gender, family income, and institutional selectivity.

Money Matters: Factors Associated With Receipt Of Financial Aid Among Youth Who Have Experienced Foster Care, Jacob P. Gross, Jennifer M. Geiger, Greg King, Samuel King

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Despite high aspirations, youth formerly in foster care may face significant barriers (e.g., academic preparedness, adult mentoring) to obtaining a postsecondary credential. Better understanding the relationship between affordability and postsecondary access for youth formerly in foster care (YFFC) merits attention from researchers because finances often present a barrier to success for this population of students. This exploratory study asks the question: What factors influenced whether YFFC received financial aid and do those factors change over time? Using event history analysis and national longitudinal on foster care and youth outcomes, we explore what factors impact whether a YFFC receives financial aid.

(De)Glossing Financial Aid: Do Colleges And Universities Actually Use Financial Student Aid Jargon?, Zachary W. Taylor, Laura Manor

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Decades of research has suggested that completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) can be a complex, difficult process for postsecondary students and their support networks. However, no extant research has informed federal student aid practitioners and researchers as to what federal student aid jargon terms institutions of higher education actually use in their application instructions to complete the FAFSA. To fill this gap in the research, this study adopts a distributional linguistic approach to analyze a random sample of federal student aid application instructions published on institutional websites (.edu) over three years (2017, 2018, and 2019) to …

Does The House Always Win? An Analysis Of Barriers To Wealth Building And College Borrowing, Katherine E. Fletcher, Matthew B. Fuller

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The racial differences in student loan debt must be interpreted through a lens of wealth building inequality. Black individuals in particular are negatively affected by official and unofficial policies that create barriers to building wealth. Financial aid policies then exacerbate this inequality with an Expected Family Contribution (EFC) formula that protects the majority of family assets from being used as required educational contributions. Using the 2011-12 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey (NPSAS:12) , we examined differences in student loan debt based on wealth building barriers (students’ access to banks, father’s education, and mother’s education). Our ANOVA models show cumulative loan …

Estimating The Spillover Effects Of The Tennessee Promise: Exploring Changes In Tuition, Fees, And Enrollment, Elizabeth Bell

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Tuition-free college policies have gained momentum since the implementation of the Tennessee Promise, which provides financial aid to students pursuing two-year post-secondary degrees in Tennessee. While previous research has addressed the effects of similar programs on student outcomes, scholars have yet to thoroughly investigate potential spillover effects of Promise policies on colleges that are ineligible for Promise funds. In this paper, I leverage a difference-in-differences design to explore changes in enrollment and tuition and fees at institutions eligible and ineligible for Tennessee Promise funds. First, I find that in-state enrollment increased significantly at public Promise eligible institutions (mainly public two-year …

Learning Experiences Of Financial Aid Administrators: A Phenomenological Study Of Workplace Learning, Diana J. Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative research study was designed to understand the lived experiences of leaders learning to lead within higher education, specifically within financial aid offices in the state of Oklahoma, and the role of formal and informal workplace learning on leadership preparation. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of leaders learning to lead. The sample consisted of five financial aid leaders from the state of Oklahoma who are members of the Oklahoma Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The electronic interview consisted of 19 questions and resulted in six themes. The researcher coded interviews with …

Pay No Attention To The Regulation Behind The Curtain: The Implications Of The Return To Title Iv (R2t4) Federal Aid Policy On Time To Degree, Apri Medina

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Federal aid programs and their effect on student persistence, stopout, and completion have long been studied, but current literature does not fully capture the temporal nature of these programs due to insufficient methods, imprecise data, or both. Using event history methodologies, I leverage a unique level of access to data at a public four-year, research intensive university to explore how the Return to Title IV federal aid withdrawal policy, one of the most prominent yet understudied aspects of federal financial aid policies, influences time to degree. The treatment of this policy is associated with a 58.6% reduced risk (reduced conditional …

First-Generation College Student Experience In The Financial Aid Process, Kristy Saunders

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

How do first-generation college students experience the financial aid process? In what ways does a first-generation status affect the financial aid process for college students? Prior literature shows that first-generation college students are more likely to navigate the financial aid process without the help of parents and are less likely to complete the financial aid process in its entirety. However, there is a gap in prior literature examining the first-generation college student experience within the financial aid process overall. The current study utilizes a hermeneutical phenomenological approach to examine first-generation college student experiences in the financial aid process at a …

Clicking In The Dark: Are Student Financial Aid Websites Accessible For Students With Disabilities?, Zachary W. Taylor

Journal of Student Financial Aid

The United States (U.S.) Access Board, a branch of the federal government responsible for advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities into U.S. society, recently amended Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On January 18th, 2018, the final Section 508 amendment required all Title IV institutions of higher education in the United States to conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) at the Level-A and Level-AA thresholds. As students with disabilities are often minoritized from the U.S. higher education system, this study explored the web accessibility of institutional .edu financial aid websites (n=450) to learn if …

Financial Aid Director: Educator, Leader, Or Manager, Jessica Mohon Flogaites

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The landscape of higher education is ever-evolving, and the financial aid office, in particular, has experienced drastic changes throughout the years in order to become the massive and complex system that is known today. Considering that financial aid can directly influence major institutional benchmarks such as enrollment and graduation rates, and the fact the position of financial aid director is not standardized across institutions of higher education, a further look into the primary role of a financial aid director is important and necessary. This study will allow for a better understanding of what behavioral characteristics are most closely associated with …

Changes In Hbcu Financial Aid And Student Enrollment After The Tightening Of Plus Credit Standards, Matthew T. Johnson, Julie Bruch, Brian Gill

Journal of Student Financial Aid

We analyze changes in financial aid and student enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that occurred after the U.S. Department of Education increased the credit history requirements necessary to obtain Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students (PLUS). We use institution-level data to examine financial aid and enrollment changes in the first two academic years affected by the new credit standards (2012-13 and 2013-14). The results show that PLUS loans declined substantially at HBCUs in 2012-13, and the decreases were not fully replaced by other types of federal financial aid. HBCUs also experienced larger declines in enrollment than other institutions …

A Case Study: Clery Act Policy And Implementation Strategies, Sara Beverage

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

The Clery Act was created as a consumer protection law to inform prospective students and their families about the safety of the campuses they consider. The law requires that post–secondary institutions participating in Title IV federal financial assistance programs remain compliant with Clery Act regulations to maintain the ability to offer financial aid funds to students. Noncompliance with the Clery Act can result in disqualification from Title IV programming and damaging institutional fines. These consequences warrant a deeper examination of the law and ways that Clery Act facilitators effectively implement compliance strategies and affect campus safety. This intrinsic case study …

College Didn’T Prepare Me For This: The Realities Of The Student Debt Crisis And The Effect It Is Having On College Graduates, April Perry, Cassandra Spencer

The William & Mary Educational Review

Student loans are like a dark cloud looming above 41 million Americans (Perna, Kvall, & Ruiz, 2017). Through young adults’ personal accounts and relevant literature, we aimed to explore how student debt has altered the lives of college graduates and what can be done to educate students before they graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. To provide context, we first discuss a brief history of student loans and address what we know from the literature about the burden of student debt. Next, we address the factors that contribute to the student debt crisis and the effects of …

Tennessee Promise: Impact On College Choice In Upper Northeast Tennessee, Jennifer R. Barber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the relationship between the new statewide two-year financial aid program, Tennessee Promise, and college choice among high school seniors in four counties in upper Northeast Tennessee. Independent variables included GPA, concern about ability to pay for college, and plans to attend a two-year or four-year institution. The dependent variables were scored on three dimensions: cost factors, social factors, and academic factors relating to college choice. Additionally, respondents reported perceptions of Tennessee Promise related to college choice. A 22-item survey was administered to high school seniors from four counties in upper Northeast …

Student Financial Aid Processes And Borrowing Perspectives, Carol Pierson Milhous

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

There is a rising level of debt associated with attending college. Educational investment decisions, knowledge of financial management, attitudes and practices of student borrowing can have a significant impact on students’ futures. Student loan debt has been linked to adverse effects post-graduation in terms of employment, savings and making major purchases. Financial aid and money management skills of federal student loans are needed to help students achieve a quality life as working adults (Wolber, 2012). Approaches toward basic financial aid literacy and managing student debt should be addressed on college campuses.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to …

How Federal Work-Study Affects The College Student Experience, Cole William Kallio-Crotteau

Masters Theses

By creating a quantitative assessment and using one on one interviews, participants were asked to describe their collegiate experience as it has changed and evolved while enrolled in the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program. To achieve the greatest amount of data, four participants were individually interviewed who currently held FWS-funded positions and determined the affects the program had on their time at the Midwestern institution. All participants perceived college experiences were impacted in some way positively, citing multiple examples of growth and development throughout their time involved.

Nudging Students Beyond The Fafsa: The Impact Of University Outreach On Financial Aid Behaviors And Outcomes, Benjamin L. Castleman, Katharine E. Meyer, Zachary Sullivan, William D. Hartog, Scott Miller

Journal of Student Financial Aid

A growing body of research indicates that proactive outreach from high schools and college access organizations about college preparation tasks, and specifically focusing on completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), results in increased college enrollment. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the role of colleges and universities in this outreach and outreach relating to additional financial aid barriers that students face while applying to college, such as the CSS PROFILE form. In this article we investigated, through an inter-university collaboration, the effect of sending targeted, semi-personalized text messages to students during the college application process about …

Uncovering Barriers To Financial Capability: Underrepresented Students’ Access To Financial Resources, Brenda Eichelberger, Heather Mattioli, Rachel Foxhoven

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Financial aid is designed to increase access to postsecondary education at all socioeconomic levels; however, college students are not always knowledgeable about personal finances or capable of making sound decisions regarding complex college and program choices, debt options, and long-term spending. This article reviews previous research on the need for financial literacy training among underrepresented students and the barriers caused by inadequate access to financial services and information. Studies reviewed explore (a) the abilities of underrepresented students to make informed financial decisions; (b) the disadvantages faced by minority and first-generation students compared to their more advantaged peers; and (c) the …

Federal Pell Grant Eligibility And Receipt: Explaining Nonreceipt And Changes To Efc Using National And Institutional Data, Brent J. Evans, Tuan D. Nguyen, Brent B. Tener, Chanell L. Thomas

Journal of Student Financial Aid

In examining national data on Federal Pell Grant eligibility in the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), we were puzzled to discover that many students who appear to have eligible Expected Family Contributions (EFCs) do not receive the award. We use institutional data from a large public university to understand and enumerate changes from initial Free Application for Student Financial Aid (FAFSA) EFC to final Pell Grant EFC and explore why EFC changes occur. We determine that the nonreceipt of Pell Grant observed in NPSAS is likely due to NPSAS not reporting final Pell Grant EFCs. We examine how the …

Leveraging Guided Pathways To Improve Financial Aid Design And Delivery, Maria Luna-Torres, Melet Leafgreen, Lyle Mckinney

Journal of Student Financial Aid

To address low completion rates, postsecondary leaders are championing a “guided pathways” approach that puts students on a prescribed route towards graduation. Designing solutions to address low completion rates is complex; in addition to academic roadblocks, insufficient financial resources coupled with a complicated financial aid system can intensify barriers to completion, especially for students whose continued enrollment is highly dependent on financial aid. Without a comprehensive approach that specifically addresses financial aid funding shortages, students will continue to struggle to complete their programs of study. Opportunities exist to redesign the financial aid system so that the current guided pathways movement …