Everything’s Bigger in Texas: Examining the Mandatory (and Additional) Financial Burden of Postsecondary Education

Student fees remain an under-researched aspect of postsecondary education and finance (Kelchen, 2016). This study examines the mandatory and additional fees charged to full-time, in-state undergraduate students by public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions in Texas (n=96). Findings demonstrate the average four-year institution in Texas charges over $1,500 per academic year in mandatory fees,$500 higher than the national average. Moreover, private institutions charge an average of $1,100 less than publics, while fees comprise 6.8% of the total cost of attendance at private and 29.1% at publics. Institutions of higher education compose fee explanations above the 12th-grade reading level and only 5.2% of the sample provided fee explanations in a language other than English, thus further marginalizing non-English speaking language populations in Texas. Implications for policy makers, practitioners, and future research are addressed.Educatio

Clicking in the Dark: Are Student Financial Aid Websites Accessible for Students with Disabilities?

The United States (U.S.) Access Board, a branch of the federal government responsible for advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities into U.S. society, recently amended Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). On January 18th, 2018, the final Section 508 amendment required all Title IV institutions of higher education in the United States to conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) at the Level-A and Level-AA thresholds. As students with disabilities are often minoritized from the U.S. higher education system, this study explored the web accessibility of institutional .edu financial aid websites (n=450) to learn if these websites were accessible for students with disabilities after the January 2018 mandate. Results suggest the average financial aid website included nearly 40 web accessibility errors, with only 16% websites being accessible enough for students with disabilities to navigate from the landing page to the federal student aid application instructions webpage. Implications for research and practice are addressed

Six Easy Steps: Do Aspiring College Students Understand How to Apply for Financial Aid?

In 2009, President Obama called for a simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), resulting in the average family completing the FAFSA in 20 minutes. Yet, during the 2013-2014 college application season, nearly 900,000 Pell Grant-eligible high school graduates did not complete the FAFSA, leaving $2.9 billion in Pell Grant funds unclaimed (Sen-Gupta, 2015). Subsequently, researchers have investigated the hurdles of FAFSA completion, however, no extant research has examined whether institutional financial aid application instructions are readable, an element of the application process which seems logical to scrutinize. This study examines financial aid application instructions of 300 randomly-selected U.S. institutions to answer the primary research question, “At what reading comprehension level do institutions compose financial aid application instructions?” Findings indicate 75% of financial aid application instructions are unreadable by high school graduates of average reading comprehension ability, with 41% of instructions written at or above a 14th-grade reading comprehension level. Implications for practitioners and future research are addressed

College Admissions for L2 Students: Comparing L1 and L2 Readability of Admissions Materials for U.S. Higher Education

Advancements in computational linguistics have allowed educational researchers to examine large amounts of text and assess the reading difficulty of that text for speakers whose first language is English (L1), and speakers whose first language is not English (L2). Considering L2 students exploring higher education, extant research suggests these L2 students do not access United States (U.S.) higher education as the same level as their L1 peers. Using popular measures of L1 and L2 readability, the current study analyzes admission instructions from 341 randomly-selected four-year U.S. institutions of higher education and finds L2 readability is more difficult (30.9) than L1 readability (37.7) and differences in means are statistically significant (p=0.001) across the entire sample and each institutional sector (public, private non-profit, and private for-profit). These findings may help explain the postsecondary achievement gap experienced by L2 students in the United States

Of Flyers and Free Speech: How Student Activism Defined the Contours of One University’s 21st-Century Hate and Bias Policy

Since 1999, The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) operated under a Student Policy on Race Relations when handling hate and bias incidents. In February 2017, an anti-Muslim flyer was posted near campus, prompting UT administration to hold a town hall for UT student activ-ists to vocalize their concerns. Through Kezar’s (2010) description of modern student protests and Barnhardt’s (2014) framework for modern student protests, this study analyzes the marginal-ized UT Austin student voices of that town hall meeting, demonstrating how modern student activism influenced presidential rhetoric and a new Hate and Bias Incidents Policy, the first in nearly two decades at UT Austin.Educatio

(De)Glossing Financial Aid: Do Colleges and Universities Actually Use Financial Student Aid Jargon?

Decades of research has suggested that completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) can be a complex, difficult process for postsecondary students and their support networks. However, no extant research has informed federal student aid practitioners and researchers as to what federal student aid jargon terms institutions of higher education actually use in their application instructions to complete the FAFSA. To fill this gap in the research, this study adopts a distributional linguistic approach to analyze a random sample of federal student aid application instructions published on institutional websites (.edu) over three years (2017, 2018, and 2019) to learn how prevalent Federal Student Aid (FSA) Glossary terms are and what terms are used most frequently. Results suggest few of the 152 FSA Glossary terms have been regularly used by institutions of higher education from 2017 to 2019, with the most frequent terms being FAFSA, loan, federal student aid, FSA ID, and scholarship. In addition, many institutions only used one or two FSA Glossary terms over three years, bringing into question the accuracy and relevance of the FSA Glossary. Implications for research, financial aid administration, and financial aid policy are addressed

Skills to Pay the Bills: A Review of College Student Employability Literature

Research has shown that many U.S. college students do not graduate with employable skills beyond academic competency to facilitate their professional success post-graduation. Moreover, researchers have found that academic- and industry-specific knowledge alone is inadequate to help college graduates secure a job and meet the demands of the contemporary, nuanced, dynamic work environment. In addressing decreases in state and federal allocations for higher education and the added pressure to produce work-ready college graduates, institutions have grappled with how to enhance student workforce development and prepare students for the labor market. As a result, this literature review provides a comprehensive, global outline of both employability and career readiness literature to understand how these concepts have been defined and measured in the past, and how researchers view employability as fitting into a 21st century postsecondary student success initiative

Increasing United States College Access for Native Arabic Speakers: Applying a Simplification Intervention and Evaluating Machine and Human Translations

Across many language backgrounds, a consistent hurdle to accessing United States higher education is understanding the basic information necessary to apply for admission and financial aid and complete the many enrollment management processes necessary to begin one’s college career (apply for housing, receive and submit vaccinations, register for classes, etc.). However, to date, no studies have explored how this type of higher education information can be simplified and translated into Arabic, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and a linguistic background shared by tens of thousands of prospective international students (and their families) seeking higher education in the United States. This case study reports on research-to-practice work conducted with the University of Iowa, specifically how the university simplified their enrollment management information and how that information was translated into Arabic for native Arabic speakers seeking access to the University of Iowa. Findings reveal that the institution simplified text to speak more directly to prospective student audiences by using second person pronouns and simpler sentence structure and diction to engage this audience. Moreover, analyses of machine and human translations of English to Arabic suggest that human translation should be the preferred mechanism of translating higher education information, as Google Translate and Chat GPT [A1] provided adequate but not perfect translations of Iowa’s information. Implications for practice and college access are addressed.Educatio