Game Not Over: Understanding How Low-Income Students Use Financial Aid and Other Resources to Persist Toward Bachelor\u27s Degree Completion

Students from low-income families are not as likely as their more affluent peers to complete a baccalaureate degree. While other forces - including, but not limited to, prior academic preparation, academic integration, social integration, and engagement on campus - may influence a student\u27s decision to persist or drop out of college, some students simply are not able to afford to pay tuition, fees, and living expenses. Over the past thirty years, the cost of college tuition and fees have increased over 500 percent, while available federal, state, and institutional financial aid programs have failed to grow at a comparable pace. Notwithstanding, there are many students from low-income families who do find ways to persist and complete bachelor\u27s degrees, though little is known about how they are able to navigate the financial obstacles facing them. This phenomenological study seeks to better understand how students who have persisted beyond their first year at one of three four-year universities (one public, one private not-for-profit, one private for-profit) finance the costs of their college education, how they use financial aid and other resources to pay these costs, and how they perceive financial aid to promote and limit their ability to persist through their educational programs. Findings suggest that students\u27 ability to persist is heavily dependent upon federal, state, and institutional financial aid policies, levels of support and counseling available at the K-12 and postsecondary institutions, and students\u27 individual levels of social and cultural capital. Students in the study relied heavily on need-based grant aid to provide the base of their funding. From there, student loans, employment wages, family support, and budgeting strategies all played important roles for various students. This study fills an existing gap in the literature, as little is known about the experiences and strategies of students with limited financial resources who are finding ways to meet college costs. Study results provide direction for theory, policy, and practice

Understanding the Involvement of Volunteers in Precollege Outreach Programs: An Exploratory Study

Precollege outreach programs are an important resource for improving college enrollment for groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education. But the ability of these programs to serve all eligible students is constrained by resource limitations. This study uses data collected from case studies of four precollege outreach programs to understand how precollege outreach programs may expand the reach of their programs through the use of one seemingly free resource: volunteers. To address this overarching purpose, the study frames volunteering as a type of prosocial behavior and explores the following three questions: How and why do precollege outreach programs use volunteers? What motivations explain a volunteer’s involvement in a precollege outreach program? How do precollege outreach programs encourage individuals to serve as volunteers? The study concludes with recommendations for program administrators and directions for future research

Equitable Value: Promoting Economic Mobility and Social Justice through Postsecondary Education

While structural racism has been part of the United States since before its founding, continued racial and gender violence alongside the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated racial inequities across the country. The disproportionate impact of these events on people of color has catalyzed nationwide activism leading to renewed conversations about who has true access to opportunity in this country. Against this backdrop, the Postsecondary Value Commission leveraged diverse voices and experiences to interrogate the role that postsecondary education can—and should—play in promoting opportunity, paving an equitable path to economic mobility, and dismantling centuries of racist, classist, and sexist attitudes and policies. To be clear: overall, postsecondary education offers individuals the opportunity to earn a better living and build a better life for themselves and their families, while also fostering a healthier, more democratic society. Yet, troubling disparities in access to these opportunities exist by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender