On
June 10, 2015, the Shanker Institute hosted a terrific panel on college
affordability that included Senator Elizabeth Warren; Sara Goldrick-Rab (a
professor at the University of Wisconson); Beth Huang from Jobs with Justice;
and Zakiya Smith from the Lumina Foundation.
You can access the entire presentation here.
I
want to focus on the short
talk by Sara Goldrick-Rab, for she made a strong case for the way the
affordability crisis particularly affects people of low to modest income
backgrounds. The data she presented
demonstrate that the link between college degree attainment and parental income
is stronger than any time in recent memory, and that there is a huge disparity
in degree attainment between students of similar ability but different income
backgrounds. She also presented data on
the prohibitive cost of college—including community college—for low-income
students, even with the financial aid that is currently available.
Watching
Goldrick-Rab’s presentation, I kept thinking of a group of low-income community
college students I’ve been following.
These are successful students, students who have strong gpa’s and who
have education and career goals that they are working hard to realize. Yet these students face financial and other
barriers that keep stalling their progress toward these goals.
They
live in a tight web of financial constraint.
Making the rent is a month-to-month worry. Even with the Affordable Care Act, medical
coverage for some is out of reach. Child
care is a major concern for those without robust family networks. Transportation in sprawling Los Angeles
presents another challenge, for many low-income students don’t have a car—or a
dependable one. It is in the midst of
these constraints that they go to school.
They
have different packages of financial aid—some combination of grants,
work-study, loans—but it is rare, as Goldrick-Rab demonstrates, that they get
enough aid to cover their costs. There
are times when they cannot afford textbooks or supplies for occupational
courses. Or they can’t pay phone or
Internet bills. Or they have to move
back in with parents or live with relatives—which sometimes wreaks havoc with
the demands school places on them. One
of the students I know lives in a two bedroom apartment with eight other
people. Their small financial aid checks
or checks from the work they do at the college are frequently late because of
administrative glitches—glitches that result in anxious negotiations with
landlords and bills going unpaid. Money
is always on their mind.
Responsibilities
beyond school also weigh heavily on them, for they have no financial reserves
to draw on—none whatsoever. One woman
was making good progress toward completing an Associate of Science degree on
top of an occupational certificate, but had to leave college for a year to pay
medical bills and help support her mother.
The
promise of the community college has been access at minimal cost, making
college affordable to a broad sweep of Americans. But for students such as those I’ve come to
know—and again these are diligent, motivated people—community college is just
within tenuous reach. And sometimes
slips out of reach. There is
understandable concern among policy makers about the time it takes many
students to complete a certificate or degree or to transfer—and sometimes the
reason is not a lack of focus or motivation, but a lack of adequate financial
aid and services that would support students’ efforts to succeed.
You can share this blog post on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader through the "share" function located at the top left-hand corner of the blog.
