GAO: Homeless and Foster Youth Face Financial Barriers to Higher Education
By Allie Bidwell, Communications Staff
Homeless and foster youth face a plethora of challenges compared with other students that make them less likely to enroll in and complete college, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Released last week, the report found that homeless and foster youth face additional barriers to federal financial assistance, including limited family support and a lack of adult presence in their lives, which makes it more difficult to navigate the college application and financial aid processes. Despite the fact that the Department of Education (ED) is required to provide accessible information on financial aid, GAO found that homeless and foster youth are often unaware of the information available.
"The lack of easily accessible and tailored information can make it difficult for these youth to learn about and obtain federal assistance for college," the report said.
The GAO also found that "burdensome program rules," such as repeated status verification for homeless students and age criteria for foster youth to access aid from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), create additional barriers for homeless and foster youth seeking financial aid.
The impact of these obstacles is apparent in the limited amount of data on college completion for these student populations. ED is collecting but has not yet published data on homeless youth college completion. The most recent data on foster youth (from 2009) showed these students are about half as likely as other students to complete a bachelor's degree within six years (14 percent, compared with 31 percent, respectively). Data show that homeless and foster youth are also more likely to pursue an associate degree.
"Students from all walks of life should have the chance to pursue a college degree, especially because higher education can be a ticket to the middle class," said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), in a statement. "Unfortunately, as this report makes clear, far too many young people who are homeless or in foster care in my home state of Washington and across the country face significant barriers to pursuing a higher education."
Murray requested the report from GAO in 2013. She has also introduced legislation – the Higher Education Access and Success for Homeless and Foster Youth Act – that would address some of the issues identified in the GAO report. In addition to requiring colleges and universities to improve their outreach, policies, and resources for homeless and foster youth, the bill would also encourage states to provide in-state tuition rates for students "who haven't had stable residency," according to a release from Murray’s office.
GAO made several recommendations to both ED and HHS to improve access to federal financial aid for homeless and foster youth pursuing a higher education. One recommendation, for example, encourages the secretaries of ED and HHS to create centralized web pages with more targeted financial aid information for homeless and foster youth. Another recommendation urges ED to develop a legislative proposal that would no longer require unaccompanied homeless youth to re-verify their status each year they apply for financial aid.
In its response to GAO, ED generally referred to actions it was already taking to address some of these issues.
ED said, for example, that it will consider GAO’s recommendation to develop legislation related to simplifying the verification status for homeless youth "within the context of its proposal for further FAFSA simplification contained in the agency's fiscal year 2017 budget."
In response to the recommendation that ED create centralized web pages for homeless and foster youth, on the other hand, ED said it already has a webpage for foster youth and had created a new webpage for homeless youth in mid-April, but GAO pressed the agency to go farther with that work.
"Making more information available online is an encouraging step in the right direction. However, much of the information on these webpages is about programs unrelated to college and is not directed at foster or homeless youth who want to apply to college," the GAO report said. "Instead, they contain technical information largely directed to policymakers, practitioners, and the general public, rather than providing information homeless and foster youth can easily use to help plan for and apply to college. In addition, these webpages are not easy to find from the main Education webpage for students looking for college information."
Publication Date: 5/24/2016
You must be logged in to comment on this page.