Full ride doesn’t cover living expenses
Would you believe that students whose tuition is fully paid by federal and state aid don’t benefit from programs explicitly designed to cover outstanding tuition payments?
This brilliant conclusion comes courtesy of two new reports from the Institute for Higher Education Policy and Education Trust, according to Inside Higher Ed.
The first analyzed Tennessee’s Promise program – the basis for a similarly named Obama administration initiative – and New York’s Excelsior program. The second is intended more as an educational tool for the public to properly evaluate “free college programs” offered by various states.
The core problem is that many low-income students don’t have any problem with tuition because they already get a full ride in the conventional sense:
[A]s last-dollar programs — which only cover remaining tuition after other forms of federal and state aid have been used — they often don’t cover the needs of the poorest students, who don’t have to pay tuition and fees but have housing, transportation, textbook and other college costs.
The first report found that low-income students have the same “unmet need” after the Tennessee program’s establishment, while higher-income students received an additional $1,500 in state support (because they pay tuition). It’s the same with low-income students in New York except the Excelsior program has “an income cap that prevents high-income students from benefiting.”
Tennessee and New York officials disagreed with the Institute of Higher Education Policy report, saying their programs have increased college attendance for low-income students in Tennessee and interact with New York’s other “robust financial aid programs.”
MORE: Conservatives attempt a Harvard coup by promising free tuition
The Education Trust report says programs must go far beyond free tuition to help low-income students: They must also cover “living costs,” never convert into a loan at some point, and apply to nontraditional and academically mediocre students.
Only one of 15 state programs the report analyzed met seven of its eight criteria, Washington state. Those states that apply an income cap to their programs, such as New York, also tend to have “more diverse beneficiaries and more closely mirror the demography of their state.”
The Inside Higher Ed report was criticized in the comment section by Sara Goldrick-Rab, a sociology professor at Temple University who studies higher education policy (known to College Fix readers for comparing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to Adolf Hitler while at the University of Wisconsin).
“When will Inside Higher Ed learn that it should seek external comments from scholars on such reports? They’ve missed the boat,” she wrote.
Goldrick-Rab linked to her own op-ed last year saying the main benefit of tuition-free programs is their track record of convincing low-income people to attend college. This is because they don’t have to fumble through the confusing financial-aid process, not knowing how much they’ll receive in the end.
MORE: Student resolution says blacks deserve free tuition and housing
IMAGE: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
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