Nicole’s institution has had students who did not return for their second academic year and Nicole wants to learn more from Amit about the financial health of her institution’s students. Follow Amit as he researches the financial health of their first-year cohorts.
This session is intended for post-secondary institutions active with the Postsecondary Data Partnership.
Transcript
Nicole is her institution’s Director of Enrollment Management and oversees its retention efforts.
Over the past several months, she has heard more stories about first-year students not returning for their second year due to financial concerns. Before she implements a new retention program, she would like to learn more about the financial health of her institution’s students.
So, she emails some questions to Amit, the Director of Student Financial Aid since he has access to secure financial aid data.
Nicole’s first question is, “What is the average unmet need of our first-year students?”
Amit logs onto his institution’s Postsecondary Data Partnership (or PDP) dashboards and selects the Financial Aid dashboard.
He checks that the Academic Year filter is set to First Academic Year, which represents first-year students. Below that filter is the answer to Nicole’s first question. The average unmet need for students in their first academic year -- averaged across the past three cohorts at the institution -- is $5,972.
Nicole’s second question, “Does unmet financial need vary by race/ethnicity?”
To answer that question, Amit scrolls down to the first set of bar charts.
He clicks on the “Unmet Need” icon in the legend. The second, linked bar chart, shows only that data.
Next, he clicks on the Race/Ethnicity dimension to disaggregate the data. Because over 90% of the institution’s students are Black or African American, Hispanic, or White, Amit decides to apply the race/ethnicity filter to include only those populations.
Now, he’s ready to answer Nicole’s question. He finds that, in 2019-20, the unmet need among Black or African American students was $4,342; the unmet need among Hispanic students was $5,889; and the unmet need among White students was $6,483.
Nicole’s next question is, “What percentage of our first-year cohort has a significant unmet financial need?”
To answer that question, Amit scrolls to the bottom of the dashboard, which shows the second set of linked bar charts. The top chart shows that, for the most recent year: 23% are over- aided; over 9% of first-year students have up to $2500 of unmet need; 11% have between an unmet need between $2501 and $5000; 43% have between an unmet need between $5,000 and $15,000; and 13% have over $15,000 of unmet need.
In Nicole’s last question, she asked if there is a difference by gender for students with significant unmet financial need.
To answer that question, Amit applies the Gender dimension and clicks on the category of “More than $15,000” in the upper chart. Focusing on the lower chart for the most recent cohort, he finds that a higher percentage of all female students in the most recent cohort have an unmet need of more than $15,000 compared to male students.
Amit prepares a short summary report of his findings. In summary, …
- first-year students have an unmet need of nearly $6,000, on average.
- Of the three largest race/ethnicity categories among first-year students, white students have the most unmet financial need, followed by Hispanic students, then Black or African American students.
- And, women are more likely to have significant unmet financial need compared to men.
Based on what he saw so far, Amit also decides to do further analysis to determine if the distribution of aid and, in turn unmet need, is skewed at the institution.
Amit emails this summary report to Nicole. He also shares these results with his financial aid counselors, so they will be aware of their students’ challenges.