Price Of College Research Articles

Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream by Sara Goldrick-Rab

Reviewed by: Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream by Sara Goldrick-Rab Abdul B. Abad Sara Goldrick-Rab. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 368 pp. Cloth: $27.50. ISBN: 9780226404349 In Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, author Sara Goldrick-Rab explores the college affordability crisis and the new economics of higher education. More specifically, Goldrick-Rab rejects the assumption that if a young person works hard enough, they will be able to get a college degree and become upwardly mobile (“move up the socioeconomic ladder”). Popular explanations of why students do not finish college assume it is to due personal failure such as a lack of resilience, time management, and intelligence. Goldrick-Rab attempts to show that the reason that low-income students do not complete college is because college is too expensive even with various forms of financial aid. The author utilizes a mixed-methods longitudinal study of 3,000 students over six years and includes data collection activities such as lengthy surveys with payments for participation, legal agreements to collect administrative data from public colleges and universities, and fifty in-depth in-person interviews. The book closely follows the experience of six students. Goldrick-Rab begins her argument in Chapter 1 by historically framing college affordability (specifically how states spend less on public higher education and how the price of college rose), the Pell Grant, and federal accountability. The author notes that colleges that charge $60,000 or $8,000 a year can both receive Pell Grants (p. 16). The original intention of the Pell Grant was for students to not have to take out loans, yet the maximum Pell Grant amount for 2016 is $5,815, which is a small fraction of a $60,000 college cost. In Chapter 2, Goldrick-Rab discusses contributing factors to the cost and price of a college education.. Moreover, what is not included in the federal calculation is basic expenses incurred by family and money they miss in the short term (p. 40). Tuition and fees are not the biggest drivers of college costs, but living costs, transportation, books and supplies, and personal expenses are important. Even if tuition costs are frozen, says Goldrick-Rab, these living costs are not. Hence, freezing tuition and fees costs do not succeed in solving the issue. A strength of Goldrick-Rab’s work is that she uses historical data, quantitative data from the unprecedented study, and the stories of six students to make her points. In other words, it is tough to imagine how compelling this argument might be for public audiences [End Page E-7] without the combination of mixed-methods. Quantitative data can be convincing, but they do not give the same in-depth human perspective one gets from interviews. Chapter 3 investigates how the concern of over borrowing from financial aid sources rests on the hypothesis that actual costs reported are less than the stated cost of attendance, but this is inaccurate because of rising living costs. What the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) does best is sort between the wealthy and middle class instead of between the lower-middle class and working class (p. 46). On the student end, it can be difficult to understand exactly where the money comes from. Since money moves through financial aid offices to a complicated funding package, Pell recipients often refer to grants as “free.” Goldrick-Rab points out that “for taxpayers’ grants are not free” (p. 60). In Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5, I am reminded of Matthew Desmond’s (2016) Evicted, which explores the complex lives of Milwaukee’s poor and how seemingly insignificant actions could result in a cycle of poverty and eviction. Goldrick-Rab’s book gives us a glimpse into the lives of low-income students to support the claim that “[t]he study of financial aid in isolation, therefore, cannot tell us how money and scarcity shape the college experience. Only research on money as it is actually possessed and used...

Debt Profiles of Model Students: The Projected Debt of Highly Productive Students and Its Economic Impact

A common misperception suggests that a high-achieving student can easily complete a degree with very limited debt, and that students with high levels of debt are thus underachievers. This assumption is supported by memories of previous decades when it was realistically possible for most students to work their way through college. This view, however, ignores the current financial realities faced by students with limited family support. The financial experience and circumstances of current, high-performing students is markedly different from similarly dedicated students in the past. Current students are now more likely to g raduate with high debt burdens that negatively impact their ability to contribute to the economy and society. This paper examines and describes the likely debt burdens now being incurred by highly productive students in common financial circumstances and projects the likely economic and societal impact of this debt. Using national data sources and theoretical perspectives based in the fields of cost accounting and economics, this study finds that students who enroll with a clear community college-to-university path are more likely to g raduate with lower debt levels. More rapid program completion likewise reduces debt levels. In addition, parental support at half of the cost of attendance reduces debt more than a full Federal Pell Grant. The results point to recommendations to policymakers at the federal, state, and institutional level to focus on providing for efficient transfer between schools, encouraging timing program completion, limiting developmental education requirements, and targeting sufficient funding to public institutions to produce optimal college prices.

“PAY IT FORWARD” AND HIGHER EDUCATION SUBSIDIES: A MEDIAN VOTER MODEL

Since 2012, at least 24 states have considered legislation on Pay It Forward (PIF) models of higher education finance (which enable students to pay the price of college upon departure from an institution, as opposed to paying upfront tuition). This paper proposes a theoretical model of PIF policies within a framework in which voters belonging to different income groups vote over the level of subsidies to higher education. We analyze the impact of two types of potential PIF policies—a deferred tuition approach and an income share approach—on college access and on voting equilibria over subsidy levels. The results show that college access is enhanced by PIF policies. The equilibrium level of subsidies depends crucially on the pattern of income distribution, in particular on the relationship between mean income and the income of the median income group, and on whether higher education widens or narrows the distribution of income. We show that the equilibrium level of subsidies to higher education will not necessarily decline under PIF, and may increase in some circumstances due to changes in college access for low‐income groups. (JEL I22, I23)

Born Under a Lucky Star: Financial Aid, College Completion, Labor Supply, and Credit Constraints

Higher education has experienced many changes since the 1970s, including an increase in the price of college, an increase in student employment during college, a decrease in college completion rates, and an increase in time to degree. This paper ties these trends together by causally linking changes in financial aid with time to degree and student employment during college. I find that additional financial aid accelerates graduation for university seniors because they increase credits attempted and reduce earnings while in college. In reaching this finding, I use administrative education and earnings data to examine a discrete change in the amount of federal financial aid available to financially independent students. The estimates in this paper imply that roughly 50 percent of the observed increase in time to degree can be explained by changes in tuition.

The effect of price shocks on undocumented students' college attainment and completion

We examine the effect of a price shock caused by the temporary removal of in-state tuition benefits on the attainment of undocumented immigrants enrolled in a large urban college system using a difference-in-differences identification strategy. The 113% one-semester tuition increase led to an 8% decrease in reenrollment and a similarly-sized reduction in credit accumulation. For students who had been enrolled at least a year prior to the policy change, the price hike caused them to leave college sooner but did not increase their probability of dropping out. Conversely, students who entered college the semester prior to the policy change experienced lasting reductions in attainment, including a 22% decrease in degree receipt compared to students with more college experience at the time of the price shock. Our results suggest that public subsidies that lower college prices can increase degree completion among resource-constrained students who have made the decision to enroll in college, with larger benefits accruing to those who are early in their college careers.

ProPelled: The Effects of Grants on Graduation, Earnings, and Welfare

We estimate the effect of grant aid on poor college students’ attainment and earnings using student-level administrative data from four-year public colleges in Texas. To identify these effects, we exploit a discontinuity in grant generosity as a function of family income. Eligibility for the maximum Pell Grant significantly increases degree receipt and earnings beginning four years after entry. Within 10 years, imputed taxes on eligible students’ earnings gains fully recoup total government expenditures generated by initial eligibility. To clarify how these estimates relate to social welfare, we develop a general theoretical model and derive sufficient statistics for the welfare implications of changes in the price of college. Whether additional grant aid increases welfare depends on (1) net externalities from recipients’ behavioral responses and (2) a direct effect of mitigating credit constraints or other frictions that inflate students’ in-school marginal utility. Calibrating our model using nationally representative consumption data suggests that increasing grant aid for the average college student by $1 could generate negative externalities as high as $0.50 and still improve welfare. Applying our welfare formula and estimated direct effects to our setting and others suggests considerable welfare gains from grants that target low-income students.

Price Discrimination and Public Policy in the U.S. College Market

In the United States, a form called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is used to determine eligibility for federal aid. The FAFSA collects extensive financial information, checks it for accuracy against several government databases, including the IRS, and then shares the information with colleges. I demonstrate that sharing the FAFSA with colleges enables them to engage in substantial price discrimination with widespread repercussions for the cost of a college education as well as the equilibrium sorting of students into colleges. I build a structural model of college pricing and price discrimination, and show that the model is identified from studentlevel data on prices and student characteristics. Reduced form estimates are consistent with several predictions of the model. According to my structural estimates, on average elite colleges capture 70% of the student-college match surplus through their student-specific prices. Withholding FAFSA information would lower prices for middleand high-income students while raising them for lowincome students. On average prices would fall by $825, and the within-college price variance would also drop by 17%. By using the FAFSA to price discriminate, elite colleges effectively levy a 1.9% tax on adjusted gross income coupled with a $709 lump sum rebate. However, with less information to use when price discriminating, they would inefficiently price up to 12% of students out of the elite market. My findings highlight a policy tradeoff between increasing the welfare of middleand highincome students at the expense of total efficiency, college welfare, and the welfare of low-income students. *Contact Information: ianfillmore@uchicago.edu †I would like to thank Derek Neal, Brent Hickman, Steve Levitt, and Chad Syverson for their helpful input throughout the project. I am also grateful for comments from Kris Hult, Trevor Gallen, Xan Vangsathorn, Jonathan Hall, Devin Pope, Ali Hortacsu, Stephen Raudenbush, Lars Lefgren, Brennan Platt and workshop participants at the University of Chicago and Brigham Young University. Kevin Brown and NORC at the University of Chicago provided indispensable help in obtaining the restricted-use data. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the University of Chicago Predoctoral Training Grant in Education funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (grant number R305 B090025).

Why Did College Cost So Little? Affordability and Higher Education a Century Ago

Public concern about rising costs of higher education in the United States often leads students and their parents along with policy makers to argue that college has become unaffordable. The claim that the price of college today is “too high” is problematic because it is untestable without historical context on how the costs and price of college have changed over time. This analysis attempts to remedy that void by connecting past and present in looking at college tuition and other expenses from a century ago.

Is College Pricing Power Pro-cyclical?

We define pricing power as a college’s ability to increase its net tuition revenue by raising its sticker-price for tuition. The greater is the positive effect of sticker-price increases on net tuition revenue, the greater is the pricing power. We gauge variation in the pricing power of private, non-profit baccalaureate colleges by estimating this effect over the academic years 2000–2001 through 2012–2013—a span which includes two recessions. Drawing on IPEDS data for 118 colleges, our empirical results reveal that the additional real net tuition revenue earned per dollar increase in the real sticker-price fell by 5 % following the 2001–2002 recession, but had fully recovered to its pre-recession level by 2004–2005. In contrast, since the end of the Great Recession of 2007–2009 the real return to sticker-price increases has fallen by 12 % with no recovery in sight by the end of our sample period. So while private colleges’ pricing power was pro-cyclical during the sample period’s first recession, the later, more severe Great Recession has produced a larger, longer lasting negative effect on pricing power. We consider the implications for private colleges of this lost pricing power.

'Pay it Forward' and Higher Education Subsidies: A Theoretical Model

Since 2013, at least 24 states have considered legislation on Pay It Forward (PIF) models of higher education finance (which enable students to pay the price of college upon departure from an institution, as opposed to paying upfront tuition). This paper proposes a theoretical model of PIF policies within a framework in which voters belonging to different income groups vote over the level of subsidies to higher education. We analyze the impact of two facets of potential PIF policies – a deferred tuition approach and an income share approach – on college access and on voting equilibria over subsidy levels. The results show that college access is enhanced by PIF policies. The equilibrium level of subsidies depends crucially on the pattern of income distribution, in particular on the relationship between mean income and the income of the median income group. We show that the equilibrium level of subsidies to higher education will not necessarily decline under PIF, and may increase in some equilibria due to changes in college access for low income groups. We also present a descriptive cross-country empirical analysis showing that there are higher levels of access to college credentials in countries with deferred tuition systems.

The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access, and Accountability ed. by Donald E. Heller (review)

Reviewed by: The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access, and Accountability ed. by Donald E. Heller Nathan J. Daun-Barnett Donald E. Heller (Ed.) The States and Public Higher Education Policy: Affordability, Access, and Accountability (2nd ed.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. 269 pp. Paper: $25.00. ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0122-5. There may be no better survey of state policy in higher education than what Heller provided in his 2001 edited volume. His early work was well conceived, highly readable for both academic and public policy audiences, and a valuable framework that the field has used for more than a decade to discuss the evolving role of policy in American higher education. It will come as no surprise to the higher education community that the second edition of The States and Public Higher Education Policy provides all the same benefits while situating the conversation in a more contemporary context. Faculty and students of higher education policy will be particularly appreciative because this volume will serve as the foundation for many higher education policy courses. Heller points out in his introduction that, even after 10 years, the major issues have remained largely the same, though the state and national backdrop has certainly changed. He has organized higher education policy into three familiar groupings—affordability, access, and accountability. Heller leads with affordability for good reason—it was the dominant higher education policy issue at the start of the 21st century and it continues to dominate the conversation today. In his introductory chapter to Part 1, Heller does a nice job of summarizing, in broad strokes, the trends in college prices and affordability and sets the stage for Mumper’s discussion of the paradox of rising prices and growing enrollments. He also points the reader to what has changed during the 10 years since the first volume, reflects on his earlier conclusions, and appraises his interpretations of trends at that time. Both the Mumper and Hauptman chapters that round out the “Affordability” section provide important insights into the complex problems and challenges we face in trying to address affordability as a public policy issue. Both authors suggest that we have unfortunately not made very much progress in addressing some of the critical challenges. Costs continue to rise, affordability (particularly when understood as a ratio of price or net cost to family income) continues to decline, and our understanding of the reasons remains largely unchanged. Mumper summarizes the dominant narratives informing how policymakers rationalize the causes of the affordability from declining state support to the cost of prestige and rising cost of competing public priorities to the lack of accountability for higher education. The one possible explanation missing from Mumper’s description is Archibald and Feldman’s (2011) revision of Baumol’s “cost disease” hypothesis. They argue that technological change and innovation have driven higher education costs, consistent with other highly professionalized service industries like medicine, resulting in higher quality rather than reduced cost. Mumper’s basic premise holds that whatever rationale resonates with policymakers will inform the policy strategies they propose. Hauptman continues to promote a set of strategies to control costs and target public resources more efficiently, particularly based upon ability to pay. The reader is reminded that these same recommendations were made nearly 10 years earlier, casting doubt on whether policymakers view them as either feasible or politically possible. This section is a sobering reminder that we have a great deal more work to do, both in understanding the complexity of the problem and in crafting solutions that address those problems. Unfortunately, this section missed an opportunity to consider some of the recent developments designed to address affordability. For example, the Colorado experiment with vouchers as an alternative state funding mechanism for higher education or the growing emphasis on place-based tuition guarantees building from the success of the Kalamazoo Promise (Miller-Adams, 2008) provide interesting experiments for allocating resources in new ways while attempting to address affordability. More recent work on providing better information to students and parents by simplifying the federal methodology for calculating need and FAFSA completion process (Bettinger, Long, Oreopoulous, & Sanbonmatsu, 2009; Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2007) may have also pointed to...

To Choose or Not to Choose: Federal Income Tax Credits and Deductions and College Choice Decisions

Education-related tax preferences studied in this paper (Hope credit, Lifetime Learning credit, and tuition and fees deduction) are a form of federal aid available for qualifying students who are currently enrolled in postsecondary institutions and paying certain college-related expenses. Such tax-based aid simply reduces personal federal income tax liabilities. The Hope and Lifetime Learning credits have been around since 1997 and education-expense deductions since 2001. Since then, the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on these tax preferences according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In 2010 alone, the OMB estimates that education-related tax preferences for individuals cost the federal government about 36 billion dollars in foregone taxes. Despite the magnitude of these tax preferences and the fact that they have been around for fifteen years, research on the ability of tax preferences to actually promote college matriculation and success is very limited. Three prior articles examine this issue: all look at the effect of tax credits on the decision to enter college (Long, 2003; Turner, 2011; LaLumia, 2012); one additionally looks at the choice between two and four year institutions and college pricing (Long, 2003).I use four waves of a National Postsecondary Student Aid study (NPSAS) (NPSAS:96, NPSAS:00, NPSAS:04, and NPSAS:08) restricted-use data files to learn how tax-based aid affects college choice decisions. The Tax Relief Act of 1997 was an important change in tax code related to educational tax preferences which created a natural experiment. I estimate an instrumental variable difference-in-differences model, where the 1995-96 school year, two years before the major changes in tax preferences’ legislature occurred, is treated as a reference year. The other three waves of data are considered post years (two, six, and ten years after the policy implementation). I find that students eligible for the tax-based financial aid are more likely to attend private for-profit and two-year colleges. In addition, eligible students are more likely to attend college part-time.

Is Postsecondary Education Affordable?

The evolution of higher education from a privilege for the elite to an economic and social necessity for broad segments of the population has created financing challenges, along with new opportunities, for students and their families. Governments that were able to provide free or low-priced access to universities for the select few have found it necessary to charge rising levels of tuition, even as less-affluent citizens aspire to enroll. In a number of countries—including Canada, Chile, and England—students have taken to the streets to protest tuition policies. Students are less militant in the United States; but there, as elsewhere, rising college prices and stagnating incomes have led to the widespread perception that postsecondary education is “unaffordable” for more and more people.Yet, it is not obvious what “unaffordable” means. What price is relevant—the published price of postsecondary study, the price people actually pay, or the price people should be expected to pay? Efforts to increase educational opportunity can be hindered if policymakers do not have a clear idea of the meaning of an “affordable” or “unaffordable” education.

The Effect of Public Support on College Attainment

This study estimates the extent that state financial support for higher education raises college attainment. Despite its manifest importance for policy, this is the first study to estimate this effect directly. Many studies have estimated the effect of college price on attendance, but state support for higher education and college price do not have a one-to-one correspondence. Moreover, state support for higher education can affect enrollment through college quality, not just price. A two-stage instrumental-variables approach is employed to account for the possibility that state funding for higher education may endogenously depend on anticipated college enrollment. Using 22 years of U.S. interstate data (1985-2006) and controlling for fixed state effects, the results of this study indicate that state funding for higher education has significant causal effects on both college enrollment and degree attainment. The estimated state-support elasticity of college enrollment and college degree attainment is about 0.35.

How People Think About: College Prices, Quality, and Financial Aid

Over the past year, we have discussed college prices, college quality, and student financial aid with elected officials and staff from several state legislatures, financial aid administrators from ...

The distribution of financial aid in China: Is aid reaching poor students?

China's central government incrementally introduced various kinds of student financial aid since the late 1990s in response to public concerns about the rising burden of college prices. Despite the marked increase in financial assistance from governmental as well as non-governmental sources in recent years especially, little is known about how well aid is currently distributed across Chinese universities and whether it is successfully reaching needy students.We use a unique randomly-sampled dataset of all local senior college students in one northwest province and a combination of non-parametric, semi-parametric and fixed effects methods to examine how various types of financial aid are currently distributed to students of different backgrounds across the university system. We also evaluate whether aid is reaching the main target population of low-income students. We primarily find that government-financed aid is allocated evenly across universities of varying selectivity and is reaching its target population of low-income students within universities. By contrast, university- and society-financed aid is not reaching low-income students. In addition, students in the most selective universities receive large implicit subsidies as they have high instructional costs, get more aid, and pay low tuition fees. Finally, a significant proportion of disadvantaged students do not seem to receive any type of aid.

Film Review: Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. 67 minutes. 2008. Adriana Barbaro, producer. Media Education Foundation. 60 Masonic Street, Northampton, MA 01060. (413) 584-8500. http://www.mediaed.org. College and university pricing: $250.00

Film Review: Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. 67 minutes. 2008. Adriana Barbaro, producer. Media Education Foundation. 60 Masonic Street, Northampton, MA 01060. (413) 584-8500. http://www.mediaed.org. College and university pricing: $250.00

The effects of the Kalamazoo Promise on college choice

On November 10, 2005, then Superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public School System, Janice Brown announced—to the surprise of Kalamazoo’s residents—the beginning of the Kalamazoo Promise. Fully funded by a set of anonymous donors, the Kalamazoo Promise is an urban revitalization program that offers up to four years of free tuition to any public college or university in the state of Michigan for graduates of the Kalamazoo Public School system who meet certain eligibility criteria. Using the subsidy as a source of exogenous variation in the price of college, we use quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of the subsidy on college choice. We find that the Kalamazoo Promise increases the likelihood that students from Kalamazoo Public Schools consider public institutions in Michigan. In addition, we find that the Kalamazoo Promise especially impacts the college choice set of students from families who earn less than $50,000 in annual income.

ENROLLMENT AT HIGHLY SELECTIVE PRIVATE COLLEGES: WHO IS LEFT BEHIND?

This study examines the enrollment decisions of freshmen applicants to highly selective private colleges relative to highly selective public colleges. The empirical analysis shows that college enrollment varies by family income—in particular, low‐income students with demonstrated financial need are less likely to enroll at private colleges, controlling for other factors including race and financial aid. Grant aid tends to have a moderating effect but the amount of aid under the existing college pricing and financial aid system appears to be inadequate. This finding provides support for recent revamping of financial aid offerings to low‐income students by some highly selective private colleges. In addition, the results suggest that while family income appears to be a strong determinant of enrollment at these colleges, race does not seem to play a role. (JEL I21)

College Knowledge of 9th and 11th Grade Students: Variation by School and State Context

While college enrollment rates have increased over the last 40 years, gaps still exist across groups. College enrollment rates are lower for high school graduates whose parents have not attended those with low-incomes, as well as Black and Latino/a students than for other high school graduates (Baum & Ma, 2007; Ellwood & Kane, 2000; NCES, 2007; Thomas & Perna, 2004). Widening gaps in income and health insurance coverage between high school and college graduates (Baum & Ma, 2007) suggest the economic and social imperative of working to increase college-going rates among these underrepresented groups. One source of differences across groups in college-related outcomes is knowledge about college and financial aid. Research shows that the more information and guidance a student has, the more likely the student is to enroll in college (Berkner & Chavez, 1997; Hossler, Braxton, & Coopersmith, 1989; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999; King, 2004; Perna, 2004; Plank & Jordan, 2001). But, research also shows that a lack of knowledge about specifically financial aid, is prevalent in society today (Cunningham, Erisman, & Looney, 2007; De La Rosa, 2006; Grodsky & Jones, 2004; Horn, Chen, & Chapman, 2003; Perna, 2004; Venegas, 2006). Often this lack of knowledge is most pronounced among Latino and Black students and parents (Grodsky & Jones, 2004; Horn et al., 2003; Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, 2004), low-income parents (De La Rosa, 2006) and parents who have no direct personal experience with college (Brouder, 1987; Cunningham et al., 2007; Hossler, Schmit, & Bouse, 1991), and students who aspire to attend a two-year versus a four-year institution (Goff, Patino, & Jackson, 2004). The limited available existing research focuses on describing the sources and timing of information about financial aid and college prices (Perna, 2004). This paper builds on prior research by exploring not only the sources of students' knowledge of college prices and financial aid, but also the nature and sources of other college-related knowledge and how this knowledge varies by school and state context. Specifically, our research extends prior work by assessing differences in student knowledge of financial aid, costs, college preparation and education needed, as well as the sources of this knowledge. We also examine how students' college-related knowledge varies based on particular aspects of the context, including the average SES of students served by schools and the state policy environment. Drawing on a multi-level model of college enrollment (Perna, 2006a) and data from descriptive case studies of 15 high schools, this study explores the following guiding questions: 1. What do 9th and 11th grade students know about college, including college prices, financial aid, academic requirements, and the type and amount of postsecondary education needed to fulfill their specific career aspirations? 2. How do 9th and 11th grade students acquire college-related information? 3. How do college-related knowledge and sources of information vary across high schools and states? Literature Review Students and parents tend to lack information or have mis-information about college. Students and parents tend to overestimate college prices (De La Rosa & Tierney, 2006; Grodsky & Jones, 2004; Horn et al., 2003; Ikenberry & Hartle, 2000), and large percentages of parents and high school students are unaware of sources of financial aid (Immer-wahr, 2003; Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, 2004) or underestimate the amount of financial aid available (De La Rosa & Tierney, 2006). Immer-wahr (2003) also found that Latino students often had bad or misinformation about careers, and the amount of education needed for specific careers. Research has shown that students with lower levels of information about especially information focused on cost and aid are less likely to expect to attend college (Flint, 1993; Horn et al. …