Dive Brief:
- Critics of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's free tuition plan contend it will only help middle-class students who were already college-bound, and that it won't help raise the state's 65% graduation rate.
- The plan would cover any additional tuition balance after all grants are applied, but for most low-income students, room and board costs — sometimes twice the cost of tuition — are the true barrier to entry and completion.
- Cuomo's plan also would only apply for full-time students, which would exclude any students taking classes part-time while they work to pay for their classes and living expenses.
Dive Insight:
Cost of living is emerging as the top barrier to college access, as housing costs in many cities continue to skyrocket, and many affordability plans fail to address this key issue. And with a growing homeless population and rising transportation costs, simply counting on students to opt to commute is not an option. In a November roundtable, one higher ed president mentioned that for many of her students, something as small as a student needing a brake job on his car kept him from persisting with his studies, because he had to leave school to work to pay for the brake job. With parents comprising the fast-growing demographic on college campuses, childcare costs could be another such barrier, and the number of childcare centers on campus is declining.
Many institutions are addressing this through gap funding pools, which provide small sums of money to students who have small balances on their accounts that might otherwise put them out of school, or to cover the costs of other "life" disruptions. But leaders also say more must be done from a policy standpoint to address the needs of these students, who are also more expensive to educate because of the additional supports they require.
One frequent criticism of many affordability proposals is that the students who need them the most are not the ones who actually end up benefiting. Many college leaders cite FAFSA simplification among their top legislative priorities for higher ed reform, because of the difficulty it presents in trying to navigate the form, particularly for first-generation students, who are often from low-income families. It is this same form that is used to award Pell grants, which many say end up benefiting middle-class and affluent families that know how to better navigate and manipulate the system. By declaring a student as independent, for example, family income is not calculated into the formula and students from well-to-do families become eligible for assistance on paper, while many students who need it the most never even apply, opting instead to skip college.
