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Wednesday, November 15, 2017

11 Ways to Keep Low-Income Students in School

Low-income college students are far more likely to drop out than better-off students and lack of funds is usually the reason. A new report by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation puts some of the blame on institutions for not providing sufficient information in clear terms about the total cost of attendance and how much financial aid students can expect.

Making College Affordable: Providing Low-Income Students with the Knowledge and Resources Needed to Pay for College lays out 11 recommended strategies for colleges and universities to help lower-income applicants better understand their options before they enroll and to assist them if they run into trouble later on.

No. 9 on the list calls on schools to “utilize low-cost textbooks,” noting that high course-materials expenses may “place a burden on students with unmet financial need.” The report points to open educational resources as a potential solution, although it acknowledges that “awareness of these alternative resources among faculty tends to be low.”

The report also endorses a five-pronged set of recommendations from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group for encouraging adoption of open materials on campus.

The first five strategies in the report advocate that institutions should furnish detailed, jargon-free information about the types of financial aid available, eligibility requirements for aid, total costs to attend for four years, and accurate estimates of living costs, and also urge students to meet with a financial adviser. Three strategies ask schools to prioritize need over merit in giving aid, commit to providing aid for all four years, and stop cutting institutional grants when students receive private scholarships.

The remaining two strategies recommend that schools set up programs to help students with financial emergencies and to find ways to integrate local social services with financial-aid programs.