Student Success for All: Support for Low-Income Students at an Urban Public University

Mark Potter

doi:10.18060/21512

Abstract

Although federal financial aid has increased in recent years, the costs of college tuition and living expenses have increased even more, leaving larger numbers of students with unmet need. Restructuring of financial aid, however, is insufficient to address the problem of diverging attainment gaps between low-income students and their more advantaged peers. Low-income students share patterns and traits that put them at greater risk of dropping out of college. In response, the Lumina Foundation published the report Beyond Financial Aid, which identifies six strategies for supporting low-income students, offers examples of how those strategies may be implemented, and provides an institutional self-assessment tool. At Metropolitan State University of Denver, a cross-functional team of faculty and staff at MSU Denver gained considerable insight by using and discussing the Beyond Financial Aid assessment tool. The action plan that emerged from the team’s work consists of five goals: Take advantage of easy wins; use data to know our low-income students; increase broad-based support for low-income students; foster culture change; and enhance financial literacy. Additionally, MSU Denver has leveraged partnerships to strengthen support for its low-income students as a natural extension of the University’s regional stewardship mission.

Highlights

For metropolitan colleges and universities, meeting degree completion goals and closing the achievement gap increasingly means providing targeted support for low-income students
Federal financial aid has increased in recent years, the costs of college tuition and living expenses have increased even more, leaving larger numbers of students with unmet need
A subset of students with unmet need—those between $1,000 to $2,000 of unmet need per year—did, according to the same historical data, dropout in greater numbers than either students with less unmet need or greater unmet need (Talich, 2016). These findings suggest that a more complex interplay is at work between unmet need, a student’s socioeconomic status, students’ willingness to take loans to complete their degrees, and possibly other behaviors and traits that are associated with low-income students

Summary

Introduction

For metropolitan colleges and universities, meeting degree completion goals and closing the achievement gap increasingly means providing targeted support for low-income students. Ongoing inquiry that disaggregates the unmet-need data by various groupings such as race, ethnicity, first-generation or age will enable the Beyond Financial Aid team to refine its understanding of who our low-income students are, what the challenges are that they face, and how successful we are in making support services available to them. A team of staff and faculty worked over the course of several months to identify housing options and resources for students who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, and the Institute of Women’s Studies and Services provides referrals to students in need of housing, transportation assistance, low-cost child care, and public benefits. Students have up-to-date, on-demand access to their accrued subsidized and unsubsidized loan amounts and what they can anticipate as their estimated monthly repayment at their current borrowing levels

The Value of Partnerships

Findings

Conclusion