Document Tag: emergency aid

Financial Stress Among College Students: New Data About Student Loan Debt, Lack of Emergency Savings, Social and Personal Resources (2024)

We provide updated results about the link between student loan debt and emergency savings with financial
stress, and after conditioning for differences in social
and personal resources. We use the stress process
model framework and data from the 2020 Study on
Collegiate Financial Wellness (N = 25,310) to estimate
ordered probit regression models. The 2020 data confirm that students report higher levels of stress if they
hold more loan debt and have lower emergency savings. Students with higher levels of financial socialization and financial self-efficacy experience less financial
stress and experience more stress when they report
both positive and negative financial management
behaviors. Among student-borrowers, the role of social
and personal resources is weakened. The data confirm
ongoing financial stress among college students and
points to the important role of financial socialization
through parents and financial skill in students’ ability
to cope with financial stress.

Basic Needs Insecurity in Texas Community Colleges: Landscape Analysis (2023)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Texas community colleges increasingly focused on addressing students’ basic needs insecurities (BNI), such as food and housing insecurity, so that students could continue to make progress towards their academic goals. As colleges continue to recover from the pandemic lockdowns and prepare for the winding down of historic levels of government support, faculty, staff, and administrative leaders are poised to consider how best to refine, scale, and sustain their BNI service offerings to most effectively support student success.
Over the past decade, the research on BNI has grown dramatically, documenting the widespread prevalence of BNI among the student population, the negative effects of BNI on student outcomes, and promising solutions colleges have implemented to best support students. This report documents findings across several critical issue areas relevant for community college leaders to consider as they make plans for enhancing BNI service offerings.

Emergency Support, with a Human Touch (2024)

Faculty and Students Together (FAST) Funds offer emergency aid to students. From bus passes and groceries to textbooks and rent, FAST Funds jump in to help keep students on track. The first FAST Fund was started seven years ago by AFT Local 212 at Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC). That first year, the fund helped about 26 students with around $7,000 of emergency aid. Growth has been tremendous, especially in the last few years. In July and August 2023 alone, MATC’s FAST Fund helped 433 students with $105,000 in aid. (For a short case study describing how the Local 212/MATC FAST Fund got started and how quickly it has grown, see go.aft.org/30a.)

We sat down with Liz Franczyk, director of the Local 212/MATC FAST Fund, to learn how the fund meets students’ needs and how more AFT unions can start their own FAST Funds.

Examining Anti-Poverty Programs to Address Student’s Unmet Basic Needs at Texas Hispanic-Serving Institutions over the Course of the COVID-19 Pandemic (2024)

Many post-secondary institutions have implemented anti-poverty programs to address students’ basic needs insecurities. This study examined the provision of 17 types of basic needs programs at Texas Hispanic-serving institutions over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim to identify changes in the number and types of programs offered as well as factors that may influence the presence of specific types of basic needs programs on campus. While the average number of basic needs programs per institution varied little over time, the specific types of programs that were offered changed. Institution type as a 2-year or 4-year institution was associated with providing on-campus mental health services, on-campus physical health services, and after-school care for students’ children at pre-pandemic and anticipated post-pandemic time points and employing
students and free food or meal vouchers at the pre-pandemic time point. The percentage of students receiving Pell Grants was associated with basic needs programs to assist students applying for public services and referrals to off-campus health services pre-pandemic and anticipated post-pandemic. The presence of an on-campus free food pantry was associated with the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants at the anticipated post-pandemic time point only. Over the course of the pandemic, there
were changes to the types of basic needs programs offered. Some types of basic needs programs were associated with institutional and/or student characteristics. Given the continued presence of basic needs programs through the course of the pandemic and into the post-pandemic period, the use of these kinds of programs and services to support students, while influenced by external factors such as the pandemic, appears institutionally established as a way to facilitate going to college for students in need.

Who Received Federal Emergency Aid Funding in Texas? A Closer Look at the Pandemic Funding Awarded to Postsecondary Students (2023)

Executive Summary

More than 1 million Texas students received federal emergency aid through HEERF, nearly half (47%) of all students statewide based on enrollment figures reported by institutions.
Despite having similar average amounts of unmet financial need, Texas students enrolled at public two-year colleges were less likely to receive emergency aid — and received smaller average award amounts — than students enrolled at public four-year universities.
Across all institutions, Black students receiving aid were awarded higher average amounts of emergency aid than other racial/ethnic student groups.
More than 450,000 Pell recipients — nearly 80% of all Pell recipients statewide — received emergency aid and were awarded significantly higher average amounts than non-Pell recipients. Nearly one-third of all non-Pell recipients — over 404,000 students — also received emergency aid.
Across sectors, improved retention rates at the institution level were correlated with larger percentages of students receiving emergency aid. This correlation was consistently stronger for institutions with higher percentages of Pell recipients.

Does Basic Needs Funding Improve Persistence Among College Students? Findings on How HEERF Dollars Impacted Student Persistence at SNHU (2023)

In October 2022, the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice (CHEPP) published the first of a two-part series on the use and impact of Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) grants at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and the national challenge of accessing basic needs for today’s learners. The first paper, Basic Needs Funding for College Students: What SNHU Learned During the Pandemic, detailed learnings from SNHU’s distribution of $107 million in HEERF dollars to 51,257 qualified learners, a sample which represented a mere 7.6% application rate among potentially eligible students. Housing, food, and transportation were identified as the greatest basic needs challenges for learners based on an analysis of the data. This paper examines whether HEERF had a significant positive impact on learner persistence among a sample of learners from the initial population of HEERF recipients at SNHU (n=47,381). It includes data and analysis on the impact of emergency grants and basic needs programs on persistence for higher education students to inform national policy discussions related to expanding learner access to such supports. Key Takeaways +Three out of five learners among a national sample (n=195,000) experienced basic needs insecurities in Fall 2020 (The Hope Center, 2021). The national impact of unmet basic needs on college persistence and success is not yet quantifiable. However, there is evidence that unmet basic needs negatively impacts learner outcomes, making the basic needs support gap an urgent challenge facing higher education and our nation. +Data indicates that emergency grants contributed to learners’ academic persistence at SNHU. Students enrolled at SNHU who received HEERF emergency grants (n=47,381) were more likely to stay enrolled in the next term, when compared with control groups. Specifically, HEERF II recipients were 15.5% more likely to stay enrolled and HEERF III recipients were 8.6% more likely to stay enrolled. +As a result of these findings, SNHU approved funding to pilot an emergency grant program for learners in need. This pilot was conducted during the 2023 Spring and Summer terms. Findings from the pilot will be used to inform future projects related to this topic at SNHU.

When Care Isn’t Enough: Administrative Burden in Federal Higher Education Pandemic Emergency Aid Implementation (2022)

Departing from traditional financial aid policies, during the pandemic the federal government
introduced emergency aid to higher education for the first time. This study examines the implementation
of that program, including students’ need for and access to the resources and the processes they navigated
to obtain help. We identify multiple forms of administrative burden present, and using both survey data
and focus groups, explain how they affected students and institutions. The psychological costs of
administrative burden were particularly substantial and should be addressed in future programming.

Emergency Aid Distribution in West Texas Community Colleges (2023)

related to food and housing instability, inadequate health care and rising attendance costs. In fact, the U.S.
Department of Education recently released the first-ever national estimates of food insecurity and homelessness
and found that college students are more likely to face these issues than the general population. These financerelated
challenges have a significant and negative impact on a student’s academic performance and are
associated with stopping-out and dropping-out of college – even when the financial challenge amounts to a
relatively small dollar amount. Emergency Aid (EA) programs are one approach that colleges use to assist students
with these unforeseen challenges.
The threats students have faced in meeting their basic needs while in college have increased significantly in the
last 15 years, with less than half of all public community colleges today meeting criteria for being affordable. The
COVID-19 pandemic compounded these affordability issues as the entire sector forced students out of housing,
shut down dining halls, and shifted their instructional model overnight.
In response, Believe in Students and the then-startup mobile app called Edquity – now Beam – partnered with three
colleges in West Texas to provide emergency aid funding over two school years, from fall of 2020 through spring
of 2022, to help keep students in school as well as in their homes with their families intact. In total, $835,750
was disseminated throughout this period to help 1,937 students address food, housing, transportation, and other
expenses.
One of the partner institutions involved, Odessa College, was able to provide persistence and graduation data for
the students who received emergency aid through this program. This data shows that over 90% of all aid recipients
persisted in college the following semester or earned their degree. This outcome is particularly noteworthy
considering the national persistence rate for public two-year institutions (students continuing their education at
the same or a different institution) was 61.5% in fall 2020, while the retention rate (students returning to the same
institution) was 52.4%.
This report describes the unique partnership between community colleges in West Texas, Believe in Students,
and Beam, sharing information about how the dollars were used by students and how the partners adapted as a
result of the project. The findings and recommendations shared here are scalable to other campuses in Texas, and
the student outcomes will serve the region’s workforce and help meet the state’s 60X30 attainment goals and
workforce needs.

Investing in Student Completion: Overcoming Financial Barriers to Retention Through Small-Dollar Grants and Emergency Aid Programs (2015)

In this report, researchers at the Wisconsin HOPE Lab use data from surveys and interviews conducted with emergency aid program administrators around the country in order to provide details on the current landscape of emergency aid. At least 100 programs are operating— some have support from larger organizations such as Scholarship America’s Dreamkeepers program, while others are sophisticated in-house solutions using predictive data or small local efforts of caring and committed staff. All emergency aid programs seek to help students overcome financial shocks, as sometimes a tank of gas or a grocery store gift card is the lifeline a student needs to remain enrolled.