Student Financial Aid - Types of Financial Aid and Application Process - Need-based Aid

Need-based Aid

Need-based financial aid is awarded on the basis of the financial need of the student. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid application (FAFSA) is generally used for determining federal, state, and institutional need-based aid eligibility. At private institutions, a supplemental application may be necessary for institutional need-based aid.

A recent trend shows that what is purely need based aid is not entirely clear. According to the National Postsecondary Aid Survey (NPSAS), SAT scores have an impact on the size of institutional need-based financial aid. If a student has a high SAT score and a low family income, they will receive larger institutional need-based grants than a student with a low family income that has low SAT scores. In 1996, public higher education institutions gave students with high SAT scores and a low family income $1,255 in need-based grants. However, only $565 in need-based grants were given to students with low SAT scores who had low family incomes. The lower a student’s SAT score, the smaller the amount of need-based grants a student received no matter what their family income level was. The same trend holds true for higher education private institutions. In 1996, private institutions gave students with high SAT scores and a low family income $7,123 versus $2,382 for students with low SAT scores and a low family income. Thus, “institutional need-based awards are less sensitive to need and more sensitive to ‘academic merit’ than the principles of needs analysis would lead us to expect.” It has been found that increasing an SAT score in the range of 100-200 points can result in hundreds of dollars more in institutional grants and on average substantially more if one is attending a private institution.

While providing financial information to the government is a reasonable expectation to calculate a student’s financial need, it does not necessarily follow that colleges should have access to this information. Providing that information to schools may be problematic because schools learn about students’ other sources of funding and may adjust their financial aid packages accordingly. There is an asymmetric information problem since schools have full knowledge of their customers' ability to pay while students and their families have little information about costs that colleges face to provide their services. That is, when planning for the next academic year, a school will know its current and projected costs as well as each student’s ability to pay after receiving state and federal grants. According to the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), “If the federal or state authorities increase financial support per student, the institution has the opportunity to capture part or all of that increased ability to pay by reducing institutional grants and/or raising their charges for tuition, fees, room, or board.” Importantly, it also notes that “the exception to this general pattern is modest aid targeted at only low-income students, like the Pell grant.” The center uses data about net proceeds (tuition plus room, board and other fees) as a percentage of median income to show that financial aid practices have not been effective in decreasing prices in an effort to increase access. Net proceeds at public four-year institutions rose from 15% to 20% of median income from 1987 to 2008. In that same time, productivity has declined in the form of lighter teaching loads for professors and increased expenditures on administrative staff.

A bill proposed by the Arizona Legislature named HB 2675 required that all students who attend Arizona State University, University of Arizona, or Northern Arizona University pay a $2,000 fee by their own means with no federal or state grants. The bill was both strongly supported by several Arizona State legislators and strongly opposed by legislators, students, and university administrators alike. Some of the outcry against the bill stated that the bill targeted the neediest of students and that the minimum requirement of $2,000 is enough to bar students from enrolling. Proponents of the bill stated that students who could not afford the fee could simply acquire a loan. One proponent (and the main sponsor) of the bill John Kavanagh, stated that he “couldn’t understand what would drive student loan up to tens of thousands of dollars.” The bill was meant to increase the incentives of students who actually want to go to college, so that they would have some “skin in the game.”