One of the perks of my job is that I get to talk with journalists around the country on a regular basis—it gives me the chance to keep up on what are the hot topics in the broader community as well as build connections with some wonderful people. I recently chatted with Jeff Selingo of The Washington Post for his latest column on whether college is affordable for middle-class families. My quote in the piece was, “They are getting squeezed on both ends because they barely miss Pell Grants and they are not the types of students getting grants from colleges themselves.”
Because I’m a data person at heart, I wanted to provide some supporting evidence for my claim. I used the most recent wave of the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study—a nationally representative study of first-time college students in the 2011-12 academic year—to look at financial need among new students at four-year colleges by family income quintile (for dependent students, who are mainly traditional-aged). The key column in the table below is unmet financial need, which is how much money students and their families have to come up with to cover the cost of attendance after grant aid and the expected family contribution (EFC)—a rough estimate of how much the government thinks families can contribute.
| Quintile | Unmet need | EFC | Total grants | Parent income |
| Bottom | $10,000 | $0 | $9,318 | $13,150 |
| Second | $10,637 | $557 | $8,550 | $34,238 |
| Middle | $9,912 | $5,440 | $5,550 | $61,388 |
| Fourth | $4,820 | $14,537 | $2,750 | $95,763 |
| Top | $0 | $31,663 | $2,000 | $161,361 |
Source: NPSAS 2011-12.
Note: Values presented are medians and are only for dependent students attending four-year colleges.
The key point here is that families in the middle income quintile have to come with roughly the same amount of additional money beyond the EFC to pay for a year of college as families in the bottom two quintiles. Grant aid drops off substantially after the second quintile (where Pell eligibility starts to phase out), so middle-income families certainly do have reasons to be concerned about college affordability. Federal loans and PLUS or private loans can help to bridge the gap for students, but these figures do illustrate why student debt burdens (although relatively modest from a lifetime perspective) are a mounting concern for a larger percentage of undergraduate students.
Robert Kelchen 