Week 12 Reading: A review of Paying the Price by Dr. Goldrick-Rab
By: Nathan Durso
Tags: Templesoced, Sociology

#TempleSocEd

When I think about a student receiving financial aid in the year 2020, the first word that comes to mind is normative. I think just about every student, except for some exceptionally elite, take on some form of financial debt from schooling. I understand that financial aid includes packages such as scholarships and grants, but the bulk of academic funding comes in the form of federal loans. Higher education has become increasingly more expensive and financially demanding over the years. The affordability of colleges has gone down, yet more people than ever are seeking these institutions to financial better their lives. Even for those able to offset the costs of college and university through financial aid are not guaranteed success. When split into socioeconomic statuses by quartiles, the completion of a bachelor’s degree becomes more unlikely the farther down an individual is on the socioeconomic ladder. Based on information captured from 1979 to 1997 only about 9% of those from the bottom quartile and 21% from the second quartile received bachelor’s degrees. While this is older information, Dr. Sara-Goldrick Rab argues that this was “when the financial aid program was in full swing”. The percentages of completion per schooling population may be worse by today’s standards. Those who are already financial struggling are taking on massive amounts of debt for schooling which they are unlikely to complete; therefore, not receiving the jobs to pay off the financial debt accrued and being indebted to the government. To help account for this problem and less fortunate students the government released the Pell grant, but college tuition cost has since been raising and the program is struggling to keep up with the financial demand of colleges and universities. So as a society what are we supposed to do with this information? Well I personally think the government should check higher education facilities for causing an enormous debt crisis among youth generations in the United States. Mandating the cost of public universities would be a start, or more progressively making all public education free for all students. If the government does not plan on doing anything within the next couple years, then it might be time for the American people to take a stance on higher education. The only way to truly hurt these institutions, in my opinion, is to attack their wallets, and sadly this means not attending. Now what I just said is unlikely to happen, since in order for there to be actual impact the financials of higher education would require everyone to disenfranchise at once, which is very radical. Still the bubble has to pop eventually.

From reading the first three chapters and introduction of Dr. Goldrick-Rab’s book “Paying the Price” on the financial problem of higher education, I can say I generally did not know how high the Pell Grant ran. I had an assumption it was $5,000 with most students receiving $1,000 from personal experience which was pretty close to the mark ($5,550 and between $1,500 -$2,500 respectively). The Pell grant in 2020 is currently up to $6,345 maximum according to United States Department of Education. Seeing statistical information on states has shed light on how bad the problem really is. I knew from personal experience with PHEAA which is the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, that getting any sort of money from them is highly unlikely. In all my years of college I have only every received $500 from PHEAA in total from the past three years of schooling. Their financial aid program is finicky and their unwillingness to compromise with financial packaging with students in entirely appalling. Neither of my parents make high-incomes and even if they did, they do not help me in the way FASFA or PHEAA implies which was 1/7th of my father’s salary. Seeing that less than 1/2 of four-year college and university attendees and just 1/4 of community college members receive any sort of financial aid from states is not surprising at all. While it is sad to recognize states are not financial helping students’ complete college it is also comforting to realize that PA is just as bad as rest in terms of Financial Aid. Something is going to need to change if the ecosystem of higher education in the United States is going to survive and I hope that in the case of my country it does.

References:

U.S. Department of Education. (n.d.). Federal Pell Grants are usually awarded only to undergraduate students. Retrieved November 19, 2020, from https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/grants/pell