A survey released two weeks ago by the National Association for College Admission Counseling found that tight economic times are driving freezes or cutbacks in the counseling staffs at the vast majority of high schools. Troubling, especially in light of a new report showing how important it can be for students to get help filling out the complicated FAFSA financial aid form. That difficulty can prove a stumbling block to college application and enrollment. (See my story about it here; blog item here.)
High school counselors are already so strapped that they can't give much help, if any, on college advising and applications. Cutbacks could only make that situation worse. At some schools, I know, those duties are handled by a career and college counselor, to take the burden off of guidance counselors, who rarely have that sort of training. I wonder if budget cuts are eliminating some of these positions, as well.
Speaking of cutbacks that affect the high-school-to-college pipeline, take a look, too, at this new report from the University of Alabama on cutbacks at the community college level. And this is happening just as the two-year colleges are experiencing a rising tide of interest and enrollment, fueled by the need for retraining in a rough economy, and a high-profile push from the presidential administration to boost Americans' educational attainment. Inside Higher Ed has a story on the study, as well.
Nonetheless, High school seniors who used a highly simplified version of the daunting federal application for student financial aid—and had help completing it—were 30 percent more likely to enroll in college the next fall than were their peers who had no such assistance, a study released today shows. The report details the results of an experiment designed to measure the effects that simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and providing personalized financial-aid eligibility information might have on students’ likelihood of applying for and obtaining aid, and enrolling in college.
Researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and the National Bureau of Economic Research teamed up with H&R Block to offer FAFSA help to nearly 17,000 low- and moderate-income families in Ohio and North Carolina who used the company to file their 2008 tax returns. Using software and procedures developed by the researchers and adapted by H&R Block, the tax-preparation workers offered to help families complete the FAFSA, which typically takes more than a dozen hours to complete. Because their tax information, which forms the bulk of the 102-question FAFSA, had already been submitted and could be imported into the financial-aid form, the FAFSA was finished in less than 10 minutes. The tax preparers also generated personalized financial-aid eligibility estimates based on the families’ tax information.
The researchers randomly assigned the families into three groups: those who got help with the quick FAFSA submission and the aid-eligibility information, those who got only the aid-eligibility information, and those who got neither. They examined the effect of the help on 12th graders, on those who were already out of school but had not enrolled in college, and on those who had attended but not completed college. The most pronounced effects were on high school seniors who received both types of help. Thirty percent more of them enrolled in college, 33 percent more won federal aid, and 39 percent more submitted FAFSAs than those in the control group, who did not get the assistance.
Young adults already out of high school benefited from the help as well. Twenty percent more of them enrolled in college, nearly three times as many completed the FAFSA, and 20 percent more won financial aid. Among young people who had completed some college, 58 percent more of those who got both types of help from H&R Block submitted the federal financial-aid forms, and 13 percent more got financial aid than their counterparts who didn’t have the assistance. Their likelihood of getting financial aid was only marginally higher, though, and their chances of re-enrolling in college were no higher.
Receiving only the aid-eligibility information, without the FAFSA help, had a negligible effect on college aid and enrollment, the researchers found. The role of the FAFSA as a barrier to college has been rising on the national radar, as President Barack Obama calls for more Americans to finish college. Earlier research by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that the complex application is one reason many young people don’t apply to college. More than 40 percent of college students fail to file the form, even though most would qualify for some form of aid.
In response to such concerns, the U.S. Department of Education has introduced key FAFSA fixes. Recently, “skip logic” introduced into the online form has enabled some students to zoom past questions that don’t pertain to them. That feature will be expanded in January. Also at that time, some students will be able to “pre-populate” the form with their federal tax information, as the randomized study did through H&R Block, automatically inserting the tax information and shortening the process dramatically. Additional improvements are in the works.
Bridget Terry Long, one of the co-authors of the study and a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said she and her fellow authors, Eric P. Bettinger of Stanford University’s school of education and Philip Oreopoulos of the University of Toronto, have been sharing results with officials from the federal government since March to help them streamline financial-aid applications. The study’s findings answer key questions and provide reason for optimism, she said.
“We’ve proven that it can work and can have huge effects,” Ms. Long said. “We were hoping this would help families, but we didn’t have any guess [the effect] would be that large. Now, we’re thinking past just a tax-preparation office. We’re thinking about ways to help give families assistance with the rest of the form, and how we can put this online, get it into schools.”
Made available widely, she said, the system could also help nonprofit groups such as the National College Access Network, which hosts “College Goal Sundays” across the country to help families complete the FAFSA. William McClintick, the director of counseling at Mercersburg Academy, a private high school of 430 students in south-central Pennsylvania, said having an easier way of completing the FAFSA would encourage families to expand their lists of target colleges. “A lot of families are intimidated by the aid process, and that affects their choices,” he said. “They are going for the easiest and the cheapest [colleges] as opposed to taking a shot at the more expensive schools where they might get funding every bit as good.”
Pat Z. Smith, a veteran Florida guidance counselor who chairs the New York City-based College Board’s Guidance and Admissions Assembly, said that having tax information automatically imported into the FAFSA would be a godsend not only to students and parents, but also to high school guidance counselors, who typically stagger under caseloads of several hundred students. “Pre-population [with tax information] is what’s so important,” Ms. Smith said. “Most of the FAFSA is based on that. If that part was already done, it would really take the fear out of it. We know full well that many students are qualified and don’t apply. And some of it is the reluctance to deal with this form.”
The study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides support to Education Week and its parent company, Editorial Projects in Education; the Spencer Foundation; the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences; the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
However the reality is that college and career futures for many youth will get tougher without the aid of high school counselors being there to provide them with transcripts and other information regarding scholarships and career opportunities. Still some youth do need to take it upon themselves to seek internships, scholarships and college information on their own. Now at the same time, some of those opportunities are only sent to schools for counselors to view and distribute which is why cutting high school counselors no matter if they are guidance or career counselors will only make getting to college tougher for some youth while at the same time choosing a career even more difficult.
Our youth today need all the help they can get but in this tough economy it is clear that if our youth is to succeed, many school districts have to keep teachers in the classroom first before they keep other support staff on board. It is sad but this is where people like me and others who know the difficulty of getting into college yet alone searching for scholarships and career opportunities can lend our assistance to high school students on how to go about finding scholarships and internships. Those of us who are unemployed and are looking to just stay busy should lend our hand to our nation’s youth particularly high schools where they need assistance in choosing the right college for them or finding scholarships and financial aid just to stay in school once they choose the college that fits them.
Getting into college shouldn’t get tougher for youth despite the odds that high school hundreds of thousands of high school counselors might get laid off. Instead this should be a golden opportunity for college recruiters to boast their assistance in helping more potential college recruits find resources to look up scholarships. Our youth need all the assistance they can get so those who own their own business or those companies who are looking to get free extra assistance should offer today’s youth non-paid internships for them to obtain experience in career fields that are difficult to get into. Think about how a youth who interns at a law firm can gain valuable assistance or a youth who wants to be a disc jockey working a radio station can help that youth understand a little bit of the ins and outs of the radio business.
Today’s youth just need us to give a care and even in these tough times when it seems college and career opportunities might get tough for some of them, I refuse to believe that all hope as lost. Therefore let’s step up the plate to help today’s youth realize their dreams and goals for the future. Nothing should stop our youth from going to college yet along pursuing their careers. There are enough of us who can find an hour a day to give assistance to our nation’s high school students and other youth to get the experience and opportunities they need to obtain scholarships for college and career development for future job opportunities.
We can win this war on our youth by winning battles like this. So stand with our youth by praying for them, lobbying to them and working with them to create a better present life for them and an even greater future for them to enjoy.
SAVE OUR YOUTH!
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2 comments:
I would agree with much of what you mention on the needs for students. I would go so far as to say the education system as failed students like myself; we're using an outdated curriculum system and our priorities are out of whack. I like alot of what you post; feel free to look on my site. I don't post nearly a quarter as much as you but I think you'd be very interested in much of what I discuss and I could definitely use some staunch debate and intellectual discussion. Check my blog out at : Davidjaviersolis.blogspot.com
Hope to hear from you soon.
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