I'm weary of how often I read about poor and working-class students not having the information about college that they need to succeed because their parents have little or no experience with the institution.
Yet the institutions themselves remain remarkably reluctant to provide the most basic information to potential and current students.
The cost of college is of course a big deal to low-income applicants. But as Bryce McKibben writes for The Hope Center, there is no standard for calculating the actual costs of attending any given college, let alone communicating the actual costs to applicants and their families so that they can make informed decisions.
The costs of housing, food, medical care, broadband, books, course fees, transportation, cell phones, child care, and fees for students in professional programs may be more than the costs of tuition, yet colleges may under-or overestimate these costs as they calculate "cost of attendance", leaving students with too little financial aid or instead convincing them that they can't afford to enroll.
McKibben recommends federal standardization of how costs are calculated as part of financial aid policy so that students and families can make more informed decisions. It seems so reasonable.
The focus on what the parents of first-generation college students can't tell their kids too often provides cover for all the ways that colleges themselves simply won't explain things to poor and working-class students who don't have private resources to help them navigate the landmines.
