$63,273.
That’s the total cost of attendance at Duke next year, after The Board of Trustees recently announced a 3.8% tuition increase. And for many of us, that’s plenty more than we can afford to pay.
Many students at elite universities with similar price tags – a number of peer schools have announced tuition increases within the last couple of weeks – get some sort of financial assistance to help offset those costs. At Duke, over half the student body is on financial aid, myself included.
That majority of us – as well as the thousands of other students receiving financial aid across the country – are lucky to have the support to make attending these schools feasible. But for many students, navigating the financial aid process was no easy road.
I was fortunate to have the support of two college-educated parents who could help me navigate the difficult, confusing process of applying for aid. (I should add here that “help me” is putting it lightly: my parents completed all of my financial aid forms and information for me, and for that I’m especially grateful.) There’s the FAFSA, the CSS profile, sibling enrollment verification, not to mention all the financial forms and questions dissecting parental sources of income. This process was complicated even for someone who had familial support, and it can be particularly difficult, for example, for first-generation college students who are applying to college for the first time in their families.
The financial aid process is much more complicated than just its dollars and numbers. The descriptions of the process – on application forms and through financial aid websites – are riddled with complicated jargon and long, densely descriptive language.
This academic, lawyer-like tone can discourage many students from even beginning the financial aid process. Last year an article by the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted these difficulties students face in deciphering the financial aid jargon, noting that the key to understanding the true cost of attendance is learning how to decode the lingo.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently made changes that help translate financial aid language into more easy-to-understand, plain English. Take something as simple as the application deadlines, which previously read:
“The priority application deadline to be considered for all types of financial aid is March 1st in the year prior to the fall semester. For full consideration, please be sure to submit your initial application materials prior to this date!”
and was then translated to:
“Apply by March 1 each year. Late applications are accepted, but the sooner you apply, the better.”
The original version of the application deadline information is difficult to follow, dense and has a harsh tone. The revisions make the point more directly, with a more encouraging tone, in a very simplistic manner.
Luckily, there are efforts underway to revise the language we use to discuss financial aid. Many financial aid offices—including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—have begun adding full-time positions dedicated to financial aid communications. This includes simplifying the information available to students through application materials and online information on their website. Duke too has made initial efforts to begin this simplification process.
If the goal is to make college accessible for as many people as possible, we also need to make the process as accessible and easy-to-understand as possible. Someone smart and well-qualified to apply to college should be able to figure out the process of applying for aid without significant struggle. This is particularly important for the low-income, first-generation students taking the step to apply to the elite schools they are qualified for; the materials they use to apply for the funds they deserve should not be so confusing and off-putting that they steer them away from submitting an application.
But this can’t be a movement taken on only by a select few schools. Students across the nation deserve the opportunity to apply for the funds they qualify for in a straightforward, easy way. To get there will require a national movement to simplify the language we use to talk about financial aid.
The numbers—that $63,273—are hard enough to grasp: the least we can do is make the words a little easier to understand.
Julia Janco is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
[1] http://chronicle.com/article/Another-College-Access-Issue-/149909/
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