Paying the Price
College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream
If you are a young person, and you work hard enough, you can get a college degree and set yourself on the path to a good life, right? Not necessarily, says Sara Goldrick-Rab, and with "Paying the Price", she shows in damning detail exactly why. Quite simply, college is far too expensive for many people today, and the confusing mix of federal, state, institutional, and private financial aid leaves countless students without the resources they need to pay for it. Drawing on an unprecedented study of 3,000 young adults who entered public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008 with the support of federal aid and Pell Grants, Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls. Half the students in the study left college without a degree, while less than 20 percent finished within five years. The cause of their problems, time and again, was lack of money. Unable to afford tuition, books, and living expenses, they worked too many hours at outside jobs, dropped classes, took time off to save money, and even went without adequate food or housing. In many heartbreaking cases, they simply left school – not with a degree, but with crippling debt. Goldrick-Rab combines that shocking data with devastating stories of six individual students, whose struggles make clear the horrifying human and financial costs of our convoluted financial aid policies. America can fix this problem. In the final section of the book, Goldrick-Rab offers a range of possible solutions, from technical improvements to the financial aid application process, to a bold, public sector-focused "first degree free" program. What's not an option, this powerful book shows, is doing nothing, and continuing to crush the college dreams of a generation of young people.
About the Author
Sara Goldrick-Rab is co-editor of "Reinventing Financial Aid: Charting a New Course to College Affordability" and has written on education issues for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association and the Atlantic, Slate, and NPR have covered her work. She founded the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, the nation's first research laboratory aimed at making college affordable, and is a noted influence on the development of both federal and state higher education policies. Dr. Goldrick-Rab is professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple University. Follow her on Twitter @saragoldrickrab.
Reviews
"Honestly one of the most exciting books I've read, because [Goldrick-Rab has] solutions. It's a manual that I'd recommend to anyone out there, if you're a parent, if you're a teacher, if you're a student" – Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
"Bracing and well-argued, this study not only puts faces on the students who struggle to earn college degrees; it also serves as a warning that university study is rapidly becoming a privilege reserved for only the wealthy. Necessary reading for anyone concerned about the fate of American higher education" – Kirkus Reviews
"What if we rebuilt the financial aid system around the ways that students actually live? Sara Goldrick-Rab takes an admirable shot in 'Paying the Price'... As a contribution to our understanding of financial aid and its impact on low-income students, it's remarkably useful... Goldrick-Rab's significant contribution here is building policy around actual students. It's easy to postulate how an ideal student should behave, or to build a policy on the assumption that every student is 18 years old, attending full-time, living on campus, and receiving ample family support. It's much harder to build policy on the complicated lives that actual students actually live. It's to her credit that Goldrick-Rab goes into the weeds. Here's hoping that people who control state appropriations hear her" – Inside Higher Ed
"A detailed look at shortsighted and insufficient policies and the specific havoc they wreak on specific students" – John Warner, Chicago Tribune
