Too Rich for Financial Aid Too Poor for College

TOMMY LY AND JANET YU
, STAFF WRITERS
Most students in high school expect to go to college after senior year. However, college can be very expensive and it may prove to be very difficult for some students to pay for the cost of attendance. Often times, students from low-income families are the ones given the most resources and help in financing their college education, such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). However, some students live in families with enough income to be considered the middle class. These students are faced with a predicament, as other factors may affect their ability to pay for college, such as if their parents are not willing to support their college education. These factors should be taken into account when determining financial aid.
Currently, the main determining factor of how much financial aid a student will receive is the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC). The EFC includes factors such as family income, assets, benefits and more; the complicated formula can be found online at the official FAFSA website. The cost of attendance for a college that includes all the fees to go to a certain college is subtracted by the EFC to determine the financial aid for that student. There is an exception to the rule in calculating EFC. If the income threshold for the parents of the family is $25,000 or less, the EFC will automatically be zero, meaning students with very low income will have their cost of attendance paid in full.
There are many flaws with the EFC system that can be highly problematic to middle class students. The government expects the family of the student to pay for the rest of the cost, but some families are unable to. Factors such as medical bills and utility bills can cause families to struggle to pay for their child’s college education. Meanwhile, other parents refuse to pay for the student’s cost because they either disagree with the choice of college or they believe that it is the student’s responsibility to pay for the cost on their own. The EFC calculation does not account for this and it affects middle class students negatively, as they will receive little, if any, financial aid.
Students who are part of a middle class family should not have their financial aid determined by their family’s income. Instead, the FAFSA should determine how much financial aid by considering outside factors like the available budget of the family or the willingness of the family to pay the EFC. In addition, FAFSA could lower the money limit on what is deemed “financially stable,” as many students who come from the lower end of the middle class families barely meet that limit, which results in them receiving little to no financial aid. Hopefully in the future, more students will be able to attend college because they get the financial aid they need.