Week 12 Reading
Before reading the book Paying the Price by Sara Goldrick-Rab, I took note of who I imagined was receiving financial aid. I thought of someone who was considered of lower income. I pictured people that represented the neighborhood I grew up in (black and Latino) and other minorities. Reflecting after reading and taking notes, I am not sure why I still thought that. Just connecting it to what we have learned about minorities even making it to high school graduation, I should have realized that the image of who receives financial is a result stemming from people moving on from high school into higher education or obtaining a GED to then do the same. In the Introduction of Goldrick-Rab’s book, she establishes that her and her team’s research was done in Wisconsin. She points out that Wisconsin is the state that comes closest national averages on things like ‘income, education, and neighborhood characteristics.’ Therefore, making it the perfect state to be used as a middle ground area to look at for change As Goldrick-Rab states, “Almost three in four students identified as non-Hispanic white, with the rest of students identifying as African American (10%), Hispanic (7%), Asian (8%), or another race/ethnicity (4%). They were broadly representative of more than 6,000 other undergraduates across the state meeting the same criteria, and with a few exceptions (notably, they were disproportionately white) they were generally representative of the national population of first-time, full-time, on-time Pell Grant recipients attending public institutions” (11). She does mention the percentage of non-Hispanic white students is disproportionate, Although, later on in chapter 3 we learn that non-Hispanic white students made up 47 percent in 2012. This is still a majority and it does also follow the pattern of who gets the Pell Grant from most to least, as represented in Table 4. My initial thoughts of who gets financial aid the most was wrong.
There were so many new things I took notes on and things I have confirmed what I have discussed with others. One of the new things I learned was how living costs are estimated by higher education institutions for their students living off campus. They are supposed to report a number to the federal government which in turn determines their living expense allowances. However, as she mentioned, the schools do not do a good job at this. Goldrick-Rab found, “…at least one-fifth of all institutions provide living allowances at least 20 percent below what we estimated was necessary for a very modest standard of living” (55). This is something that was new to me, in the form of how important this number is. I had always simply assumed it was a number that was on the school’s website as an extra to help students prepare for their college life. I never realized how significant it is in determining financial aid. The fact that schools are informing families to under-prepare for college living expenses is wrong. It is setting up both the student and the family up for failure. When they realize they did not have enough money, blame will be thrown around. Following the quote, Goldrick-Rab mentions that having a higher, even it is the realistic number, could definitely deter some people from choosing to go to that institution…
After reading the introduction I was moved to investigate a little before continuing to read, as I am a very curious person. The numbers she mentioned regarding the students she researched also roughly (no more than 4 percentage points off) represent Pennsylvania’s 2019 stats according to the Census website. Also, from a data table from the Census website, the group lowest in income was ‘Black’. They had the highest percentage in people earning under 15,000, at 18.8 percent. They had the lowest percentage in people earning 200,000 and over. They also had the lowest median income, at 42,658 in dollars. Yet, they represent only 24 percent of Pell Grant recipients. As Goldrick-Rab stated, “…the characteristics that make the students eligible for aid often also make them less likely to finish college” (79). It is a hard life to live when you qualify for help on one aspect of your life, education, but the other aspects/responsibilities will not be having anything to do with it until after you become successful in it. All this information leads me to question, how are those at the bottom supposed to balance being poor, hardworking, educated, and happy? Something does not belong, and if you flip it to rich, lazy, uneducated, and sad, it is even worse. How can one thing be amongst the others?
