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.