Document Tag: financial aid

Improving the IPEDS Student Average Net Price to be More Relevant for Consumers (2023)

This paper examines the limitations of the current IPEDS Student Average Net Price metric and propose data-driven solutions to better inform consumers—particularly students and families from low-income and marginalized backgrounds—about the true cost of attending college. These recommendations align with #RealCollege’s mission to address critical challenges like food and housing insecurity, child care, transportation, and other basic needs that frequently impact students’ ability to afford higher education.

Buying time: Financial aid allows college students to work less while enrolled (2024)

Many empirical studies have established that financial aid improves college attainment. Few have been able to test why. This study used administrative records of employment and earnings to get a more complete picture of students’ finances during college and test one potential mechanism, that financial aid buys students time by allowing them to work less in off-campus jobs. We studied recipients of New Jersey’s need-based Tuition Aid Grant (TAG). We used the eligibility cutoffs of TAG to identify groups of otherwise similar students who received sharply different amounts of aid. A prior study took the same approach and found that TAG increased on-time graduation rates from public universities. At these schools, 80% of TAG recipients worked at some point during the year. We found that when students received additional aid, on average they reduced earnings dollar for dollar.