Not all
first-year college students are equally concerned about covering the costs of
their education. The latest freshman survey report by the Higher Education
Research Institute based at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) reveals
divisions along gender, ethnic, and economic lines.
The annual
survey, based on responses from 137,456 full-time freshmen at 184 U.S. colleges
and universities, showed 55.9% of respondents overall were feeling some level of
concern about college costs.
However, 15.8%
of female students said they were very worried about costs, compared to just 10.1%
of male students. The gap widened among racial groups: 24.7% of Latino freshmen
and 22% of black freshmen expressed major concerns about paying for school, but
only 9.2% of white students did. Conversely, more than half of female, Latino,
and black freshmen thought they had a “very good chance” of landing a job
during school to help finance those costs, but less than half of white and
Asian freshmen thought they’d be able to find work.
Some 15% of
students said they had to give up their first choice of school because of cost,
the largest percentage since the question was included on the survey in 2004.
More of these students also indicated they hadn’t been offered financial aid by
their top choice.
There was a
hopeful note in the survey report, though: “Although concerns about the cost of
attending college and strategies to finance college continue to be at the
forefront of students’ and parents’ minds, first-time, full-time students
entering college in the fall of 2016 placed less weight than previous cohorts
on economic considerations when deciding whether to pursue higher education;
instead, they drew their motivation for a college degree from a place of
personal and intellectual development.”
