Financing the cost of postsecondary education was not easy for the low-income students who graduated from high school in 1992. The majority depended on financial aid and, except for those attending community colleges, this often meant taking out student loans. Even with financial aid, low-income students had to find approximately $5,000 in additional funds from other sources to meet their postsecondary expenses. Some received contributions from their parents; some lived at home to reduce expenses; most held jobs while they were enrolled. Nearly two-thirds of the 1992 high school graduates whose families had annual incomes under $25,000 managed to attend postsecondary education within two years of completing high school.
There is no question that financial aid is an important component in financing low-income students postsecondary education, and that it is necessary in providing access to postsecondary education. Differences in the amount of aid available, however, appear to have had a greater effect on equalizing net educational costs among different types of institutions than on access. No matter what type of institution they attended, the average net cost after aid for low-income students was approximately the same.
The question posed in this study is whether the available amounts of financial aid and the actual net college costs (as opposed to perceptions of high costs) are sufficient to account for the lower postsecondary enrollment rates of low-income high school graduates. The evidence presented here suggests that other factors also are associated with this result, especially educational expectations and plans, levels of academic aptitude and achievement, and taking the steps required to be admitted to a four-year college.\46\ Tables 35 through 37 provide an overview of these factors, first for all 1992 high school graduates (table 35), then for those who were college qualified (table 36), and finally for those who were college qualified and took both steps (table 37).
Barriers to a four-year college education for low-income high school graduates appear to include low educational expectations and poor academic preparation, both of which are associated with low rates of taking the college entrance examinations and applying to four-year colleges. However, even those low-income students who were academically college qualified were less likely to take the two steps toward four-year college admission than were middle-income students. The perception that four-year college costs are too high and that the financial aid will be inadequate may have contributed to this. The more information that college-qualified low-income students obtained about financial aid (either by speaking with people or through written materials), the more likely these students were to have taken the necessary steps toward attending a four-year institution. Moreover, among those low-income students who were accepted to a four-year institution, almost 90 percent enrolled. That is, the majority of low-income high school graduates who took the college entrance examinations, applied to a four-year college, and were accepted for admission were not deterred from enrolling for financial (or other) reasons.
The difference in the four-year college enrollment rates between Hispanic and black high school graduates also suggests that college access is more than a financial issue. The majority of both Hispanic and black high school graduates came from low-income families. Both groups experienced some of the same obstacles: they were less likely to be college qualified and less likely to expect to finish college as eighth graders. Black students, however, were more likely than Hispanics to attend a four-year college. Those black students who were prepared academically were just as likely to apply and take a college entrance examination as college-qualified Asian and white students, and the four-year college enrollment rates of college-qualified black students also were just as high. College-qualified Hispanic students, on the other hand, were less likely than blacks to take the necessary two steps for admission to a four-year college, and less likely than any other racialethnic group to enroll in four-year colleges. Factors relating to college costs or financial aid availability examined in this study do not appear to account for these persistent differences between the two groups.
46/ This confirms previous research which has found academic aptitude and achievement to be the biggest predictors of four-year college enrollment. See, for example, C. Manski and D. Wise, College Choice in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), and Y. Ozden, "Have Efforts to Improve Higher Education Opportunities for Low-Income Youth Succeeded?" Journal of Student Financial Aid 26 (1996): 19-39.
