preview

Financial Aid in Education Essay

Good Essays

Financial Aid in Education

A guy in $50,000 of debt has got to be irresponsible with his money right? Actually, it is more likely that he is a college student. Hundreds of thousands of college students around the country are in a financial predicament because of the government?s impersonal financial aid policies. The federal government?s current system has too many quirks which end up hurting the people that financial aid is supposed to help. The federal government should change its financial aid policies to take several more factors, such as the percentage of educational expenses paid by the student, into account.

Under the present system, all students applying for federal aid file a form called the Free Application for Federal …show more content…

The federal government does not use this application for aid. The CSS Profile is a service provided by The College Board. It includes many more factors such as the age of the parents, house payments, and car payments. Mostly expensive private universities use the CSS Profile because their students have much more financial need.

The current system does a fairly decent job of predicting the amount of aid needed assuming both the parents and the student are paying for the student?s education. The big problem with the system is that not all parents help pay for their child?s education. According to the current system, the student would have to cover the expected contribution from their parents as well as their own expected contribution should their parents decide not to help foot the bill. For example, if a student from a middle class family which is earning $70,000 a year. Assuming the student was earning $3,000, and that student wanted to attend Duke University, approximately $33,000 a year, the family would be expected to pay $13,641 of the bill for each year2. If the parents choose not to help the student pay, then it would be the student?s responsibility to pay every bit of the $13,641. How many students graduating high school can afford that? I think that this factor could quite possibly be the biggest reason that students think they cannot afford college.

Another problem is that the current system actually punishes students for saving their

Get Access