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 accesses his institution’s Postsecdonary Data Partnership, or PDP, Financial Aid Dashboard.
First, he checks that the Academic Year filter, found in Dashboard Settings, is set to First Academic Year, which represents first-year students.
The answer to Nicole’s question is below the Dashboard Settings. He finds that the average unmet need for students in their first academic year, averaged across the past six cohorts at the institution, is $322.
Nicole’s second question is, “For the most recent cohort, does unmet financial need vary by race/ethnicity?”
To answer that question, Amit scrolls to the chart titled, “Average Cost of Attendance Grouped by Enrollment Type in the 1st Academic Year”. To change the dimension, Amit clicks on the “Race/Ethnicity” metric.
Now the chart represents the average cost of attendance in the students’ first year of college grouped by race/ethnicity. Next, to find the differences in unmet financial need, Amit clicks on the filter, “Unmet Need”.
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. For the most recent cohort, he finds that, the unmet need among Black or African American students was $3,166 and the unmet need among Hispanic students was $2,946. Because the average unmet financial need for White students is negative, this implies that they are being over aided.
Nicole’s next question is, “For the most recent cohort, what percentage of our first-year cohort has 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: 30% are over-aided, 1% have less than $500 of unmet need, 6% have between $500 and $2500 of unmet need, 9% have between $2500 and $5000 of unmet need, 30% have unmet need between $5,000 and $15,000, and 24% have more than $15,000 of unmet need.
For Nicole’s last question, she asked if there is a difference by gender for students with significant unmet financial need for the most recent cohort.
To answer that question, Amit clicks on the “More than $15,000” in unmet financial need in the upper chart and he clicks on “Gender” to filter the lower chart.
Then he scrolls down to view the results of the lower chart.
Reviewing the results, he finds that 690 female students and 459 male students in the most recent cohort have an unmet need of more than $15,000.
Amit prepares a short summary report on his findings. In summary, across the prior six first-year student cohorts, the average unmet financial need was only $322. However, that average hides large discrepancies within student subpopulations. Of the three largest race/ethnicity categories, Black or African American students have the most unmet financial need, followed by Hispanic students while White students, on average, are over aided by several thousands of dollars. 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.