Excelencia’s Policy Agenda: College Affordability

Overview

Latino students leverage cost-saving measures to make college more affordable (e.g., working while enrolled, enrolling part-time, mixing their enrollment, etc.), and they balance many financial decisions when pursuing a college education–supporting their families, covering transportation costs, and weighing the opportunity cost of lost wages. Policy solutions and institutional practices must reduce prices and other financial barriers to ensure students can earn a degree without incurring unmanageable debt. Excelencia in Education prioritizes:

• Increasing Transparent Financial Literacy: Expanding efforts by states, institutions, and other key actors to provide resources and tools so that students and families fully understand the real costs of college and the financial resources available to them.

• Fostering Low-Debt Education: Advocating for policies that prioritize need-based grants over loans and include basic needs—such as childcare, food, transportation and housing—within the true cost of attendance.

• Lowering the Price of Education: Supporting and incentivizing institutions to lower prices and contain costs to students while investing in academic excellence.

How can policy help Latinos, and all, students afford a degree?

• Incentivize FAFSA completion to increase access to financial aid.

• Reduce unmet financial need to pay for college by including basic needs in financial aid calculations.

• Strengthen the Pell Grant and make it a fully mandatory program. 

• Revise the Federal Work-Study distribution formula to more strategically support students with high financial need, reduce administrative burdens to program participation, and increase funding for the program.