Nick Hillman
Indiana University
If you’re the first person in your family to go to college, then what I’m about to write will probably strike a chord with your own experiences. Preparing for college is a real challenge for first-generation students because many don’t even know where to start looking. Many first-generation students come from low-income families and don’t have the financial means to visit campuses, pay application fees, or take college prep classes. Add to this the fact that the college bureaucracy is difficult to navigate, case in point being the convoluted FAFSA form.
As if these factors aren’t enough to turn first-generation student away from college, we can’t forget to look at the affordability issue. The federal Pell Grant only covers one third of tuition for low-income students attending public four-year colleges (it used to cover almost 100%), and states are beginning to invest public money in merit-based (rather than need-based) aid that disproportionately benefits middle and upper income students. In the end, students with critical financial need aren’t getting enough support and many low-income/first-generation students conclude that the cost of going to college isn’t worth the benefit. Simply put, many of these students feel that college is a club in which they don’t belong.
Given this context, what can be done to help more first-generation students prepare for and succeed in college? How can we reduce the costs and show how great the benefits can be?
There are many solutions to this question, ranging from school-based mentoring programs like College Summit to national efforts like Upward Bound. Indiana operates a program called 21st Century Scholars, which gets “at risk” 8th graders on the college track and promises to pay their tuition when they enter college. There are several local and state efforts combatting the opportunity gap for first-generation students, but we need a national effort if we really want to address this problem in its entirety. The most successful programs provide early intervention during elementary and junior high; we can not wait until 12th grade to help students prepare for college.
Let me suggest one potential solution that could break down the financial barrier for first-generation and low-income students: create a federally-funded college savings account for all elementary students receiving free or reduced lunch. The idea is pretty straight-forward — the federal government would provide annual grants to needy students during their K-12 years, and by the time they enter college they would have a little nest egg that can cover college costs. In theory, spreading out the costs like this will save the government tons of money, while at the same time it would build a “college-going culture” by getting students to realize college is an option.
Currently, some 17 million students receive free or reduced lunch, the majority of elementary school students in the South live in poverty, and Pell Grant recipients are graduating with more debt than their peers. Clearly, there is an imperative to fix the financial inequalities that exist in our public education systems, and maybe a savings account model would help improve socioeconmic conditions while building a college-going culture. If we accept the current financial aid system we have and don’t intervene early, then the status quo will only continue to drive a wedge between the rich and the poor, resulting in greater class inequality which eventually will erode the ideal of achieving the “American Dream.”
