While empowering social mobility and ensuring access for a broad cross-section of the public is central to higher education’s mission, there are two additional reasons why universities must use financial aid to enroll more low-income students:
1. Outsized population growth: Low-income students are the fastest-growing market for higher education—exceeding the growth of upper- and middle-class families by at least 25 percentage points in recent years.
2. Key to campus diversity: Attracting low-income students is critical to increasing campus diversity. African-American and Hispanics families, for example, are disproportionately represented among the low-income band.
This resource is part of the Clearly Communicate Price and Financial Aid Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Aid communications: Lost in translation
25%
Low-income students disproportionately come from families without college backgrounds, leaving them without the cultural capital needed to navigate the ins and outs of the college admissions process. Being first-generation leads students to drastically overestimate college cost and assume four-year schools are out of reach, despite substantial available aid.
Even low-income students who navigate the college admission process face obstacles—they are prone to financial aid anxiety and aid-induced melt. As a result, institutions face:
- Reduced low-income access. According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ Education Longitudinal Survey, over 16 percent of low-income first-time, full-time freshmen enrollments in 2012 failed to enroll due to confusion or anxiety over financial aid.
- Reduced tuition revenues. Our research identified significant lost sums in 2014 due to missing financial aid paperwork or aid-related melt by low-income students—over $500K at one public research university.
“Language is an access issue…It’s our obligation to make sure [financial aid] is approachable to the people we say we want to recruit.”
Eric Johnson, UNC-Chapel Hill
Pinpoint confusing language with a jargon-reduction audit
In 2014, Eric Johnson was hired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to increase low-income access by reducing financial aid confusion. But his biggest barriers were internal—financial aid staff resisted changing long-standing language.
Resistance
“Financial aid language is mandated by law”
“Language must be specific—simplified text is too watered down”
Reality
Content is often mandated but specific language is not
Many of UNC-Chapel Hill’s communications were at a 20th-grade level, too complex for target audiences
For those of us who “speak financial aid,” it is easy to overlook confusing terms or phrases. To safeguard against this, financial aid shops can implement a jargon-reduction audit using a free language complexity estimator, the Gunning Fog Index. This tool can guide editing judgment and gain stakeholder buy-in for implementing change.
Below is a “before” and “after” example of how the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill rephrased its financial aid application deadline. Initially, the Gunning Fog Index scored it at a 17th-grade reading level. After changes, it scored at a more reasonable 5th-grade level.
The priority application deadline to be considered for all types of financial aid is March 1st in the year prior to the fall semester. For full consideration, please submit your initial application materials prior to this date!
Gunning Fog Index Score: 17.0
Apply by March 1 each year. Late applications are accepted, but the sooner you apply, the better.
Gunning Fog Index Score: 5.8
Win-win: Jargon reduction benefits students and institutions
Reducing confusing language means that not only will students have better odds of navigating the enrollment pathway, from admissions decisions to matriculation, but also that enrollment staff will spend less time interpreting obscure language for students and more time helping students with special cases. In the end, both students and institutions win—growing access, decreasing melt, and increasing campus diversity.
