Use of aid increasing by higher-income students

By Kristen Hoverman
The Collegian

The average amount of financial aid a student receives is growing, but the increases are not large enough to prevent dependence on borrowing for lower income students.

The College Board’s annual trend report on college data, released Oct. 18, shows low-income students receive more grant aid than higher-income students.

However, changes in student aid policies have been more beneficial to those in the upper half of the income distribution than those in the lower half, the report said.

The trend showed 43 percent of the education tax credits and about 70 percent of the benefits of the federal tuition tax deduction go to taxpayers with yearly incomes of $50,000 or higher.

“With this annual data, the College Board aims to illuminate important issues related to access and affordability in higher education, especially for the growing population of students from low-income families who are aspiring to go to college,” College Board President Gaston Caperton said in a press release.

“It is heartening to see new efforts from colleges and universities, as well as other educational organizations, focused on finding ways to reduce college costs. We trust those efforts will continue and increase,” he said.

The trend shows students with high academic standing from low-income families are less likely to enroll in college than students from higher-income families. College completion rates are significantly lower for low-income students.

“We need to do a better job of seeing these students through to graduation,” Caperton said.

Enrollment pattern trends showed only a fraction of undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 24 are full-time college students, while almost 40 percent of undergraduates are over the age of 24. About 40 percent are enrolled part-time.

Though tuition increases at public schools are smaller for the 2005-06 academic year than they were in the last two years, the College Board data on financial aid in 2005 shows the amount of student aid has roughly doubled since the mid-1990s.

Nearly $129 billion in student aid was distributed in 2004 and 2005, almost $10 billion more than the previous year. Nonfederal sources distributed $14 billion in student aid.

The report also showed the total percentage of undergraduate aid in the form of grants declined for the third year in a row. Grants accounted for 46 percent of aid for undergraduates and 22 percent of aid for graduate students.

“Socioeconomic status and college success cannot be separated from the serious problem of unequal academic opportunity within our schools,” Caperton said. “In addition to increasing the affordability of higher education, we need to make sure that students from all backgrounds have the opportunity to prepare for college.”

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