NASFAA Mention: The Students Disappearing Fastest From American Campuses? Middle-Class Ones

"Alec Scicchitano may have been considered middle class, but it was still going to be hard for him to afford college. The son of a single mother who’s a writer, Scicchitano knew he 'needed to go to a university that would give really good financial aid' — something many students in the middle class assume they can’t get," according to The Hechinger Report.

"...Middle-class high school students give a number of reasons for forgoing higher education, according to an analysis of federal data by the Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce: 4 percent cited family obligations, 6 percent planned to take a gap year before enrolling, 8 percent said they weren’t ready and 20 percent said they just didn’t want to go.

Fully a quarter of middle-class high school students who don’t plan on college said it was because of the expense. The inflation-adjusted published price of college tuition, fees, room and board between 1999 and this year increased 54 percent at private nonprofit and 78 percent at public universities and colleges, according to the College Board. The median income of middle-class families, when adjusted for inflation, Pew says, hardly budged during that general period of time.

'There has been a lot of concern about that group in the middle, which has only gotten greater as the costs have gone up,' said Karen McCarthy, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and a former university financial aid officer."

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

 

Publication Date: 10/2/2019


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