FINANCIAL AID is Essential to Ensuring Access to Higher Ed
Receiving a financial aid package is the point where dreams start to crystallize.
All Students Need to Know Their Financial Aid Status—Show Them How
The perceived, or real, inability to pay for college is one of the biggest barriers to postsecondary education—both for students enrolling directly from high school and for adult students. A student’s journey toward postsecondary success often falters not because of grades or ability, but because they are intimidated by or uninformed about the process of securing aid.
Every year, millions of students who could go to college don’t, simply because they never completed the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) or TASFA (Texas Application for State Financial Aid). These applications determine a student’s eligibility for federal, state, and institutional financial aid, including grants, scholarships, work-study programs, and loans to cover the cost of college or career school.
IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN COMPLIANCE
Completing the FAFSA or TASFA helps ensure that graduating seniors have positioned themselves to be able to receive financial aid if they choose to pursue postsecondary education. Skipping these forms can limit their access to valuable financial support and future opportunities.
TIMING IS CRITICAL
Financial aid advising must begin well before application deadlines. Schools have a responsibility to inform students and their families about financial aid, and the longer schools wait, the more students fall behind. Once students graduate, the challenge of applying for aid becomes even greater without school-provided guidance and resources.
With ongoing and strategically timed encouragement, guidance, and targeted resources, schools can create momentum that carries students over the barrier of financial aid application.
of Texas high school seniors completed the FAFSA in May 2024.
Explore FASFA/TAFSA Resources
Texas leads the way by requiring high school seniors to either submit financial aid applications or opt out formally—a policy that has supported FAFSA completion rates to be 10% higher than the national average.
However, the reality in Texas is that college enrollment rates immediately after high school vary across racial and socioeconomic groups. While college might not be the desired path for every student, completing these financial forms is critical for those whose career goals are best supported with postsecondary education. Ensuring all Texas students understand how to complete the financial forms – and seeing the process through – is key to leveling the playing field to entering college.
Seeing Is Believing: Show Students Their Options—On Paper
Quantified assistance changes perspectives on what’s possible. Many students and families assume they can’t afford college. But when they see their financial aid packages in writing, they can begin to consider new horizons.
Once a student receives an aid letter—often showing thousands of dollars in support—they begin to think concretely about their futures. Once they know how much college actually costs, they can begin to build a plan that otherwise would not have been possible.
Source: Best Colleges
This moment can be powerful for families, too: Parents and guardians are often unaware or under-informed of financial aid opportunities and unsure whether they can afford to send their child to college. Having solid aid numbers to work with helps tip their thinking from doubt to possibility.
Build Capacity to Reach Every Student
In many respects, the full process of CCMR is difficult because there are so many routes to take to the same goal. Fortunately, supporting financial aid applications is a well-mapped area of the CCMR landscape—there is a proven process and many high-quality resources available for educators.
To meet their obligation to students, districts must build enough capacity to ensure that students feel confident applying for financial aid.
Four Keys to Success
Districts should ensure staff—from advisors to teachers, and others—are trained well enough about the TASFA/FAFSA process to advise students themselves or offer them the best resources to answer their questions.
Leveraging community partnerships with individuals or organizations that families already trust—including local organizations or businesses—and special events can help broadcast financial aid awareness and information to every student when districts lack the ability to do this alone.
Ongoing communication that starts well before senior year can have a cumulative positive effect on completing the FAFSA and TASFA process.
Don’t predict. Prepare. Avoid the urge to sort students into college-bound or not-college-bound lanes. Everyone should have the chance to see their potential financial aid.
College Prep: Not Just for High Schoolers
No two students will follow the same path to higher education, but they should encounter helpful resources and information well before high school. For example:
Maintain Statewide Momentum
The data is clear: More FAFSA/TASFA completions = more college enrollments.
Texas’ FAFSA/TASFA completion rates show that our approach is working. Paired with Texas’ efforts to build meaningful career and education pathways and prioritize credentials of value, exceeding the national average by 10% in FAFSA completion could mean thousands more students pursuing their college dreams in a structured, meaningful way.
Now, we just have to stay the course and expand our efforts.
Texas’ May 2024 completion rate is about 8% higher than the nation’s.
Financial aid support matters not only for students, but also for the districts that benefit from CCMR Outcomes Bonus funding—incentives designed to spark further progress in postsecondary readiness. Districts that proactively support FAFSA/TASFA completion are not only ensuring students meet a state graduation requirement but more importantly, are unlocking vital financial resources and opportunities that could enable and support their postsecondary aspirations.
The bottom line: We should ensure every student has the opportunity to pursue higher education with the help of timely and accurate financial aid guidance.
