Faculty-Run Emergency Aid for Students (ND)
Note: This documented is now outdated and provided for historical purposes only. Please see Believe in Students (believeinstudents.org) for more information on running a FAST Fund.
Document Category: Practitioner Guide
Addressing Housing Insecurity and Living Costs in Higher Education (2016)
This Guidebook, co-authored with the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, reviews and explains strategies that institutions of higher education may consider to support their students with housing insecurity and other living costs, as well as examples of these strategies’ implementation. In the introduction, the Guidebook contextualizes these strategies with reference to evidence on student living costs, most of which has been discussed in prior PD&R publications. With high rates of college enrollment despite stagnant or declining family incomes and increasing college costs, today many college students are struggling to make ends meets and succeed in school. Key strategies include, for example, engaging in extensive, approach outreach for students who may benefit from support; partnering with local agencies and organizations such as Continuums of Care; and connecting students with benefits. The Guidebook is sourced from interviews, suggestions from stakeholders including other federal agencies, and existing research.
The Real Price of College: Estimating and Supporting Students’ Financial Needs (2021)
For decades, complicated financial aid formulas and variable sticker prices have made it difficult for students to understand the real price of college. For colleges, understanding students’ financial need is also challenging; current financial aid formulas cause many students’ actual need to be understated.
This report examines what happens when:
financial aid leaders and staff better understand students’ financial need, as operationalized by negative EFC; and
students better understand college costs and how to advocate for more financial support.
Using data gathered at Temple University and six colleges and universities in Texas, we explore how more nuanced information about college costs and financial need can change beliefs and behavior among financial aid staff, leaders, and students.
Clearing the path to a brighter future: Addressing Barriers to Community College Access and Success (2013)
Over the past 100 years, community colleges have evolved to become the largest sector of higher education, representing over 8 million credit students nationwide. These public institutions are pillars of the communities, providing education and workforce training that fuel local economies. While community colleges have historically focused on providing access to higher education for students, the need to increase degree attainment has emerged as an equally important aspect of institutional achievement. As the Association of Community Colleges Trustees work towards the goal of increasing not only higher education access but success for the nation’s low-income and underserved populations, there remains an overarching concern regarding the ability of our institutions to provide students with the assistance and support needed to persist and complete their degrees.