CAMRY DEAN
Staff Writer
Last Wednesday, Nov. 30, Fredonia hosted activist and professor of Higher Education Policy and Sociology of Temple University Sara Goldrick-Rab for a lecture on the price of college.
Goldrick-Rab is a national scholar and expert on college affordability and founder of the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, a research laboratory that works to find ways to cut higher education costs and make college affordable for everyone.
According to her website, “Goldrick-Rab’s commitment to scholar-activism is evidenced by her broad profile of research and writing dissecting the intended and unintended consequences of the college-for-all movement in the United States.”
Over the past 10 years, Goldrick-Rab has co-edited two books on college affordability, “Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work‐First Idea Eroded College Access for the Poor” in 2006 and “Reinventing Financial Aid: Charting a New Course to College Affordability” in 2014.
More recently, she has been touring the country, speaking at universities about her newest book, “Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream,” which was published this year.
For her book, Goldrick-Rab studied 3,000 Pell-eligible students of the 42 Wisconsin public colleges for six years through the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, starting in 2008 when America was falling into the Great Recession.
“This is precisely the group that, in public imagination, gets the most help and therefore, should be the most likely to finish college,” Goldrick-Rab said.
“[The research] helped me quantify how many of [the students], for example, were actually getting any financial help from their families and because they responded to our surveys, we also learned how many of them were giving their families money while they were still trying themselves to pay for college.”
Unfortunately, through her research, Goldrick-Rab learned that Pell-eligible students were not graduating at a higher rate than those who did not qualify for the grant, and she instead learned valuable lessons about college affordability.
The first lesson was that the Pell Grant, which was supposed to make community college free for students, no longer does that.
“The Pell Grant was created by Sen. Claiborne Pell from the state of Rhode Island, and what he said was what the Pell Grant should do is that it should fully cover the cost of attending a public college or university because family income, the origin that you came from, should not determine your destination,” Goldrick-Rab said.
As more people became Pell-eligible after the Recession, the amount of money that was needed to spend on the Pell Grant increased, which worried policy makers in Washington. While the number of students needing financial assistance increased, the amount of expenditures of the Pell Grant did not increase to match this.
In addition to this, according to Goldrick-Rab, financial aid may come to students “too little and too late” and one of the reasons for this is that the price of college, especially living expenses, is underestimated.
“87% of undergraduates in the U.S. do not live on campus, and yet every college and university lists the cost of housing and food for students, and they list it for housing and food that they don’t provide,” Goldrick-Rab said.
It’s unclear how a university may get their estimates, but the federal government requires them to list a number for off-campus expenses. While visiting the New School in New York City, Goldrick-Rab learned that the school listed a price for off-campus living that was lower than it has been in the last four years.
“According to the New School, over the last four years, it has become less expensive to live in New York City,” Goldrick-Rab said. “They have dropped the estimated cost of living for students living off campus by more than a thousand dollars over the last four years. And they can legally, and they have incentives to because schools want to look less expensive, and they want to look more like they’re meeting your need.”
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Terry Brown and Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services Daniel Tramuta reminded the room that the issues Goldrick-Rab discussed directly relates to Fredonia and its students.
“Of our six major enrollment goals, goal three states: ‘Keep Fredonia financially manageable for students through multiple mechanisms, while maintaining the fiscal viability of the institution,’” Terry Brown said. “This is a challenge that we’ll meet through several intentional strategies including increasing understanding and awareness of cost affordability for attending Fredonia.
“After reading Dr. Goldrick-Rab’s book, I realize that we need to revise that sentence to re-increase understanding and awareness of cost, price and affordability. [Goldrick-Rab] makes the distinction in her book between cost versus price,” Brown continued.
Goldrick-Rab discussed with the room suggestions for action for administration, faculty and students.
“Regardless what is happening at the federal level, regardless what is happening at the state level, there are things that you can be doing right here, each one of you, to address the issues,” Goldrick-Rab said.
On a larger scale, Goldrick-Rab suggested to the room to ask the policy makers the tough questions about financial aid and to have that conversation.
On a university level, Goldrick-Rab suggested that the university should assess prospective students to make sure they are ready for college and its living expenses.
“[This] can be assessed by very short questions about whether they’ve got enough food to eat, whether they have regular access to food and enough money to pay for it, whether they have a secure and safe place to sleep at night. That’s their basic needs,” Goldrick-Rab said.
By surveying these things about their students, a university will then be able to offer assistance and support however it’s found necessary. It may also be necessary to tell Pell-eligible students of government assistance programs that they could utilize if needed such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Communication is also important and Goldrick-Rab believes faculty and staff should be ready to support students who might be facing homelessness, poverty and other issues. It’s also crucial that students are honest about issues they may be facing in order to receive the help that they need.
“On campus, it is so important that people feel free to talk about their economic challenges,” Goldrick-Rab said. “This is not anybody’s personal problem. This is not any individual student’s fault. This is not anybody’s lack of financial knowledge. This is a public policy problem, and it’s bigger than any individual student or any individual college.”
To reach out to Goldrick-Rab, she encourages questions through her Twitter, @saragoldrickrab, where she is the most active.