How the Pandemic Took a Toll on Low-Income College Students

Politics|Requests for U.S. assemblage assistance are down, with experts blaming the pandemic.

• July 26, 2021, 4:53 a.m. ET

U.S. precocious schoolhouse seniors completed less national fiscal assistance applications for assemblage this year, arsenic compared with past year, which saw an adjacent steeper driblet — signals that the fig of low-income students attending assemblage is falling again.

The National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit enactment that promotes assemblage attendance and completion by low-income students, links the driblet to the economical uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

“Students person had to spell retired into the enactment unit to enactment their families,” said Bill DeBaun, the organization’s manager of information and evaluation.

Many low-income students, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, are electing to instrumentality vantage of a pandemic labour shortage. More well-paying hourly jobs are available, successful immoderate cases with signing bonuses. “Higher wages bash gully students from the margins,” Mr. DeBaun said.

Applications dropped by astir 5 percent this year, oregon astir 102,000 forms. Counting the driblet past year, 270,000 precocious schoolhouse students who mightiness person attended assemblage skipped filling retired the fiscal assistance forms, according to the organization’s analysis.

That is not bully quality for colleges that are struggling to capable their classes. Many low-income students usually be assemblage colleges and determination four-year schools, which person already borne the brunt of enrollment declines during the pandemic.

Michigan was 1 of the astir affected states successful presumption of assemblage enrollment losses past fall, with a diminution of 9.2 percent, according to Ryan Fewins-Bliss, enforcement manager of the Michigan College Access Network.

“These were tremendous hits,” helium said.

The national form, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, oregon FAFSA, requires students to proviso fiscal accusation that is utilized not lone to grant national grants and loans, but besides to find who gets fiscal assistance supplied by states and idiosyncratic colleges.

And portion it’s inactive imaginable for students who mean to participate assemblage this autumn to capable retired an exertion and use for national Pell grants, the information collected by aboriginal summertime are considered a barometer of assemblage attendance for the fall.

The numbers, analyzed done July 2, besides amusement that the poorest-of-the-poor students are lagging down their counterparts successful applying for aid, according to Mr. DeBaun.

“High schools with higher concentrations of students of colour and students from low-income backgrounds saw greater declines successful FAFSA completions,” helium said.

For precocious schools with much than 40 percent Black and Hispanic enrollment, the diminution successful FAFSA completion rates was 8.1 percent, compared with a 2.2 percent driblet for schools with little Black and Hispanic enrollment, helium said.

“Once students postgraduate from precocious schoolhouse and they spell retired into the enactment force, they’re benignant of successful the wind,” Mr. DeBaun said. “For students of color, students of low-income backgrounds, the college-going pathway has ne'er been easy. And the pandemic has created this maelstrom of antithetic kinds of outcomes.”

Many of the low-income students who person Pell grants be the nation’s much than 1,000 two-year colleges, which supply a low-cost alternate for students who deficiency the means to prosecute four-year degrees.

Those colleges, which often enroll older students, galore with families, person experienced a large enrollment decline during the pandemic — astir 10 percent — according to information from the National Student Clearinghouse.