Report: State Funding for Student Financial Aid Inched Up In 2013
By Allie Bidwell, Communications Staff
The amount of state-funded financial aid awarded to students increased by 1.6 percent between the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs’ annual survey, released this week.
In 2013-14, states across the country awarded a total of $11.7 billion in student financial aid, up from $11.3 billion in 2012-13. Nearly $10 billion – more than three-quarters of the state aid – was awarded in the form of grants, an increase of about 3.6 percent from the previous year. Of the 4.1 million grants awarded in 2013-14, 75 percent were need-based and 25 percent were non-need-based, the report said.
Ten states (California, Washington, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina) awarded more than $150 million in undergraduate grant aid, but four other states (South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee) awarded the largest amount of grant aid on a per capita basis, the report found.
Overall, exclusively need-based aid made up nearly half (47.3 percent) of all aid awarded to undergraduate students while exclusively merit-based aid accounted for 18.4 percent. Other programs and those with both need- and merit-based components accounted for the remaining 34.3 percent.
Just eight states (California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and North Carolina) together awarded about 70 percent of all need-based grant aid. And while most states reported that they had financial aid programs with a need-based component, two (Georgia and New Hampshire) reported no need-based aid programs, according to the report.
The report also details the total amount of non-grant aid – such as student loans, loan assumption or forgiveness, work-study, or tuition waivers – awarded by each state in the 2013-14 year, as well as the total aid awarded by each state, broken down by the type of aid (need-based grant aid, non-need-based grant aid, and non-grant aid), and aid awarded by states over time.
The authors of the report added, however, that simply increasing the number of students who apply for and are awarded financial aid won’t necessarily improve college completion rates.
“One of the biggest topics in financial aid right now is a perennial one: how to make it simpler and easier for students to receive financial aid,” the report said. “Aid application rates and awarding percentages are just one piece of a complex puzzle, however, involving institution cost, curriculum quality and relevance, workplace and economic needs, student preparation and desire, and societal expectation. If students feel college costs more than it is worth, doesn’t teach them things they can use, isn’t needed to get a job or doesn’t matter in the workplace, haven’t been prepared to succeed in college, or come from a culture where college-going is not the norm, merely increasing the number of students applying for aid won’t increase college completion rates.”
Publication Date: 10/7/2015
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