Upcoming Event: Saving Financial Aid

The Asset Building Program is looking forward to hosting an event this coming Monday morning in collaboration with the Assets and Education Initiative (AEDI) at the University of Kansas. Join us on Monday, July 15th at 9:30 am here at our office in D.C. or live online. The event, Saving Financial Aid: Expanding Educational Opportunity and Reimagining the Way We Pay for College by Promoting Children’s Savings, will explore the relationship between savings and educational outcomes, the potential for policy to support the savings of lower-income Americans, and the importance of including an assets-perspective in the higher education financial aid conversation.

A panel of experts from the assets and education fields will also discuss and react to a new report from AEDI entitled Building Expectations, Delivering Results. Copies of the report will be available at the event or for download on Monday following the event. (Check back for updates and links from this post on Monday.) The report examines a range of policies that have the potential to substantially alter the financial assistance landscape and asks some important questions: Do savings offer a viable alternative to the debt-driven model of higher education finance? What kinds of policies would be necessary to extend the opportunity to save to all children regardless of family income?

A college education remains an important vehicle for economic mobility, but many lower-income students are shut out by the rising cost of attendance at both public and private institutions of higher education. For those who do enroll, there are considerable risks. Nationally, 89% of low-income first-generation college students will ultimately leave college within six years without their degree in hand. Many of them will be saddled with debt, but won't have the academic credential on their resume that they hoped would boost them up the income ladder. As AEDI's new report articulates, finding innovative ways to promote savings from a young age and to build support for public and private funding to support low-income students' savings goals can help to mitigate some of these distressing educational and financial outcomes.