[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/CollegeFinancialAid_TheGreen1213131.mp3|titles= WDDE's Tom Byrne and contributor Larry Nagengast discuss efforts to help Delawareans navigate the college financial aid maze.]
When John Carney’s older son, Sam, started applying to colleges, Delaware’s Democratic congressman developed a sudden longing for the good old days.
“When I was applying for college, some 35 or so years ago, the elite schools were like $7,000 a year, and the University of Delaware was about $1,500,” he recalls.
“If you look at it today, UD is $22,000 or $23,000, including room and board. The elite schools are north of $50,000 and some are over $60,000,” he says.
And, he adds, the typical graduate comes out of college with loans of $25,000 or so to repay — a debt large enough to cause many to put off purchasing a home or a new car.
“This is a big problem. Look at the big picture. With the global competition for jobs, the college degree is becoming more important and less accessible,” he says.
After seeing the numbers for himself, and hearing from Delaware parents about their struggles in paying college costs, Carney has taken a proactive approach.
While he’s not optimistic about Congress passing any laws that would cap tuition increases, he has held a series of listening sessions with parents and educators, and he has created a web page filled with links to other sites that offer helpful information on the college financial aid process.
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And Carney is not alone.
The state and many school districts have intensified their efforts to educate high school students and their parents on the complexities of applying for financial aid, and they’re paying special attention to students from lower-income families and to those who would be the first in their families to go to college.
“Most students are clueless about the money part” of applying for college, says Shirin Skovronski, college counselor at Newark High School, and parents of first-generation college students find that “much of the terminology [on applications] is alien to them.”
For some families, the issue is much more basic. “If the family is wondering how it is going to pay to put food on the table,” Skovronski says, “they can’t even think about going to college.”
And the counselors themselves are struggling to give their students adequate support in their college searches. “Their job descriptions are not limited to college applications and financial aid. They have scheduling, [standardized] testing, and other responsibilities, including social and mental health support,” says Shana Payne, director of the Higher Education Office in the State Department of Education.
On top of that, Payne adds, the typical counselor in Delaware schools is responsible for 457 students, but the recommended average is 250.
“Public school counselors have ridiculously large caseloads, and 90 percent of what they do has nothing to do with college counseling,” says Will Yarnell, college counselor at Salesianum School, a private Catholic institution in Wilmington.
This combination of factors has prompted the development of new partnerships to help students and their families as they seek financial aid.
One of the most visible participants in this new effort is Stand By Me, a financial empowerment program developed through a collaboration between the state and the United Way of Delaware.
“Yes, college is expensive, and many say it will be the next big financial crisis, but for families of low and moderate incomes a lot of scholarships are available,” says Mary Dupont, director of financial empowerment for Stand By Me. “People are just not aware of what’s out there.”
Broadly speaking, Stand By Me’s mission is to provide personal financial coaching to Delawareans of all ages and income levels. Helping families understand college costs is part of that mission, Dupont says.
Two years ago, Stand By Me began hosting events to help parents fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the form used to determine a student’s eligibility for federal loans and grants. Last year, as the group’s efforts grew, Skovronski asked Stand By Me to provide a FAFSA session for the parents of Newark High School students.
The program was a success, with 65 families receiving help, and that led Vilicia Cade, the Christina School District’s senior director of secondary education, to ask Stand By Me about developing a broader program to serve all of the district’s high schools.
Working with the district, Stand By Me created a website, Yes I Can! Go To College, filled with information and links to other sites that offer details on careers, college applications and financial aid.
“We feel we’ve done a good job picking out the most informative and reliable websites,” Dupont says, noting that the site is available to everyone, not just Christina students.
In addition, the ståate Department of Education recently awarded Christina a $35,000 college access grant to work with Stand By Me to train staff at Glasgow and Christiana high schools in how to use a curriculum that Skovronski developed to help Newark High School students through the application and financial aid process. In addition, some of the grant money will be used to pay counselors to work in the summer to follow up with recent graduates to make sure they start at the colleges where they have been accepted, Cade says.
Stand By Me is also working with the Indian River School District, providing mentors to college-ready students at Sussex Central and Indian River high schools.
Stand By Me will also help parents in the Christina and Indian River districts complete their FAFSA forms, and will arrange similar sessions with other districts if it has volunteers available, Dupont says. (Dates have not been scheduled. Parents should check with their districts in January for specific times and locations.)
The Department of Education is looking into ways to expand FAFSA help sessions to all school districts but has not yet settled on the best approach. “The goal for families is to complete the FAFSA by early March. We hope a large number of schools will be able to schedule events by then,” Payne says.
Cade, the Christina school administrator, recognizes the importance of involving parents of lower-income and prospective first-generation college students into the process.
“They don’t have confidence. They don’t have an understanding of their own personal finances to know how they’re going to pay, and they don’t know how to navigate the whole process — filling out the forms, looking for grants, looking for scholarships,” she says. “And if they receive a letter from an institution saying their child has received aid, sometimes they don’t understand what it means. All they understand is they’re barely making their living expenses in the situation they’re living in.”
Once these parents get a better understanding — of both their own finances and the aid process — they are more likely to help their children pursue college opportunities, she says. “It’s all about education and capacity building.”
Carney urges parents to start saving early for college. He suggests they consider using the Delaware College Investment Plan, which allows deposits to grow tax-free until they’re needed for college, that he helped set up when he served as the state’s secretary of finance.
He’s drawing on those funds now as he pays his son’s tuition at Clemson University, where out-of-state tuition, room and board totals about $40,000 a year.
Sam is doing well in his first semester, Carney says. But the congressman still cringes when he thinks about writing those checks. “Whether he’s getting his money’s worth,” he says, “I’m not sure.”