Access to Education

8/10/2009: InsideHigherEd.com has several interesting articles today, including this on perceptions about access to financial aid for college, by Deborah M. Warnock at UW. From their summary of her paper:

• Hispanic and Asian parents of eighth graders are less likely than white parents to think about how to finance a higher education, and black parents are more likely than white parents to think about paying for college.
• Parents with low incomes and less education are less likely than others to have thought about how to pay for college.
• While a majority of parents of all demographic groups who are below poverty level report that they believe they have “no way” of getting funds for college for their children, white parents in poverty are more likely to have this feeling than are minority parents.
• Among middle and upper income families, across the board, only a minority feel there is “no way” to pay for colleges. In this economic group, whites are less likely than minority parents to feel that way.

The findings about low-income parents believing that they can’t imagine finding funds for college anywhere are “especially troubling,” Warnock writes, because “all of these families would likely be eligible for Pell Grants,” which could cover considerable shares of expenses at many institutions. So these families do in fact have resources, but don’t realize it. While studies in the 1990s found that many high schoolers and their parents were unaware of the availability of aid, the Warnock paper suggests that public information campaigns that have taken place since haven’t changed the situation and may be needed earlier.