Rethinking Financial Aid Equity
This morning I woke up with “equity” on my mind. I then said some stuff on twitter and because of the enthusiastic response I’m reposting it here.
Higher education experts have long said that financial aid that does not go to low-income students is inequitable because it isn’t delivered based on need. Basic principle: those with the most need get the most aid.
I no longer agree.
I’ve got several problems with that approach:
1. The assessment of “need” for financial aid purposes is a hot mess. Plenty of people have way more need than revealed by the federal needs analysis. Many don’t get Pell even though they are low-income because of problems with paperwork.
2. The middle-class is huge and vulnerable. Think of a family making $50k. Too “rich” to get Pell and too poor to afford college prices. Are they really without need, and what is their student’s odds of success if left to depend only on loans? Answer: low.
This is why we see downward mobility in the middle class, especially families of color, and why food and housing insecurity is affecting middle-class college students too. The middle-class isn’t without need by a long stretch. College is protective, IF they can get degrees.
3. The political economy of social programs in this country is such that if you give only to those with need based on some sort of targeting, the program will lack political support. Politics of resentment are strong. You need the middle class vote to sustain the program.
So is it really equity-promoting to focus a 21st Century college financing scheme solely on low-income students? Will it effectively diminish inequality? I seriously doubt it.
Approaches that recognize the failure of the needs analysis and include the middle-class get my vote.
Need more to read? Check out Katherine Newman’s Falling From Grace, Strobel’s Upward Dreams Downward Mobility, this report from Brookings and of course my book Paying the Price.
One more thing:
*Please* stop using my work to suggest that #FreeCollege programs don’t help unless they cover living expenses. That’s utter BS & an insult to the students in our studies. Many can’t get enough aid under the current system. Some are middle-class. All know: big Pell isn’t coming
They *are* helped by a movement — however incremental- to move away from needs analysis and FAFSA. They are helped when the middle-class gets helped. And they are helped by the political energy around public higher ed.
I see no way that college living expenses will be sustainably covered by means-tested grants. They have gone the way of all cash assistance programs. We need supplemental supports to cover them rather than grants.
All in for #RealCollege students means rethinking the old.
Done.
