In its $2.2-trillion, “phase three” stimulus bill—the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—Congress allocated $6.28 billion to a worthy cause: emergency grants to college students to help them overcome unforeseen challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. While this timely aid will provide a much-needed safety net for its recipients, institutions face challenging questions about how to assess financial need in a particularly tumultuous time.

This report puts the CARES Act higher education aid in context, drawing from landscape analyses of emergency aid programs and interviews with low-income students who have received emergency aid. It provides recommendations to institutions considering how best to design the structures of these programs, with implications for who will receive this important aid.

Emergency Aid: Providing a Critical Lifeline

Before examining the role of emergency aid for students amid campus closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to examine the role of emergency aid in student success.

Prior Research

Many students live paycheck to paycheck, with little savings or support from family: in a major survey, about half of undergraduate students said that, if they faced a sudden $2,000 expense, they “certainly could not” or “probably could not” come up with the money from any source.1 Sometimes, the only thing standing between a student completing their semester is an expense as small as several hundred dollars, such as a laptop repair.2 A financial emergency can imperil progress in college, and those who leave college without a degree predominantly cite financial reasons for their departure.3 Research also tells us that need-based financial aid can have a positive impact on persistence, indicating a link between students’ financial need and their ability to stay enrolled.4

Sometimes, the only thing standing between a student completing their semester is an expense as small as several hundred dollars, such as a laptop repair.

Generally, emergency aid programs distribute aid after a student informs the program of an unforeseen, urgent expense.5 These programs compensate for a key limitation of the financial aid system: it is impossible to know what unplanned needs will emerge during the school year when the student first applies for financial aid, typically before the school year begins. Emergency aid can function as a safety valve, supplying aid shortly after an urgent and unforeseen need is identified. One study found that applications for emergency aid are processed quickly, most often in one or two days, with aid delivered shortly after.6 While some emergency aid programs provide students with loans, tuition balance waivers, debt forgiveness, or campus vouchers, the CARES Act provides for direct cash payments that don’t need to be repaid.

While the benefits of these programs are multifaceted, the educational objectives of most emergency aid programs are student retention and students’ academic success.7 They intend to send the message that a student’s educational progress should be a function of their hard work and desire to learn, not life’s unpredictable ups and downs.8

While individual campuses have tracked grant recipients to see how their outcomes compare with those of their peers, randomized control trials (RCTs)—the gold standard for assessing a program’s effects—have only been used once in published research to measure specific effects. This research found that access to a community college emergency aid program (admittedly, a fairly restrictive one9) did not improve student outcomes; however, the authors found that access to a multi-pronged support system that included emergency aid, along with coaching and mentoring, did improve outcomes for some students.10 Further RCTs can explore how factors such as program restrictions could relate to varying effect sizes.

In addition to the quantitative research that has been conducted, qualitative research can help us understand how emergency aid can shape student outcomes. In 2018, I interviewed fourteen undergraduates who had received emergency aid through a program for low-income students at a mid-size liberal arts college in the Northeast, as part of an internal program assessment in coordination with the dean administering the program. The expenses covered by their aid included transportation to visit family, a winter coat, laptop repair, and groceries over winter break. These students’ grants were all under a thousand dollars, typically just a few hundred.

The students’ experiences offer some key insights:

  • By receiving the aid, these students did not have to take other, more drastic steps to meet their needs, such as taking on high-interest credit card debt or working additional hours at their job, even during finals. Without the aid, some would have gone without what they needed, such as enduring a cold winter without a winter coat. In some cases, this “Plan B” would have clearly and tangibly impinged their education. One student was prepared to fly home for spring break to provide care for an ailing family member, knowing that if she did not receive the emergency aid she would not have had the money for a flight back to campus.
  • Some students reported psychological benefits, saying they felt less stressed about their financial difficulties knowing that the program provides a “fallback plan.”11 In some cases, the psychological benefit was the main benefit: one recipient, for example, needed the aid so that she could reduce her employment workload and complete the semester while coping with depression. Some also reported that after receiving the emergency aid they felt more comfortable asking for help, financially and otherwise.
  • The students’ expenses that were covered by the aid don’t always fall neatly into what would be considered “cost of attendance” expenses. For example, several students requested airfare or bus fare to spend a break with their family, and they said that this time with loved ones amid a stressful semester was critical for their mental and emotional well-being; however, this kind of transportation is usually not factored into the “cost of attendance” calculations that are the basis for determining financial aid. As this report will describe later, this is a potential quandary for CARES Act aid.
  • The students’ financial need did not result from a failure to plan or budget their own money; they needed it due to genuine, unanticipated emergencies.

These participants are only a sample of the students served by one program within a diverse landscape of aid programs, but these insights may be instructive as institutions build or modify programs to deliver CARES Act aid.

Because emergency aid programs are a relatively new form of aid,12 important questions remain unanswered, especially for the scale of the CARES Act’s investment in emergency aid. For example, we don’t yet know if there is a minimum amount of aid needed to impact a student’s likelihood of staying enrolled, and we don’t yet know if certain student populations benefit more strongly from this aid than others.13 Regardless, to get the aid into students’ hands quickly, institutions must make weighty decisions about the structure of these programs and—by extension—who will be most served by them and what their impact will be. What we know about existing programs, and about financial aid more broadly, should guide administrators.

Existing Programs

Prior to the CARES Act, emergency aid programs were usually funded by institutional or philanthropic dollars.14 Examining a sample of 700 public and nonprofit institutions, a 2016 study found that 74 percent had an emergency aid program, of which half provided aid in the form of grants that, like the aid provided by the CARES Act, lack eligibility restrictions15 such as GPA.16 (Other forms of emergency aid include restricted grants, loans, tuition grants, and campus vouchers.)

These programs tend to be small: of unrestricted grant programs, 77 percent served less than 50 students per year, and 47 percent had an annual budget of less than $10,000. For comparison, the median institution is receiving $379,000 in emergency aid through the CARES Act, well above $10,000.17 These programs are often not well-known, and in a 2015 study of emergency aid program administrators, only half of respondents agreed that students on their campus are at least somewhat aware of the program.18 A major study of students’ basic needs security found that less than 10 percent of food-insecure and housing-insecure survey respondents have accessed emergency aid.19

Importantly, what qualifies as an “emergency” expense differs by program. A 2015 study examining existing aid programs found that only 19 percent included tuition as an allowable expense, 29 percent included food, and 67 percent included housing and rent.20 This means many existing programs will face the choice of expanding the range of allowable expenses or maintaining prior rules.

To distribute CARES Act aid to students, many programs will be delivering much more emergency aid than they have before, many will receive applications for expenses that were previously not available, and some existing programs will likely need to make themselves better known by students. Other institutions, meanwhile, will be building these programs from the ground up.

Targeting CARES Act Aid

The CARES Act provides emergency aid at a time when emergencies are widespread and permeating almost every facet of life. The closures of college campuses and local economies nationwide are likely to see students laid off from their jobs at a disproportionate rate when compared to the population overall,21 even in what is already a historic stretch of job losses.22 The loss of this employment income removes a pillar of low- and moderate-income students’ finances. While the traditional unemployment insurance system typically denies students jobless benefits,23 many should receive the expanded benefit Congress created for those who typically do not qualify—the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. But, particularly because this is a new program, campuses will need to help students access this benefit.

Campus closures also mean that students lose access to key resources often provided by institutions, from computer labs to food pantries, from internet access to health centers. There is also doubt that campuses can open normally in the fall semester.24 In short, students must pay for more with less income to do so, and with little certainty about what they can plan for in the coming months.25

The Need to Target

Given the widespread and serious need, how much of an investment in financial aid is $6.28 billion? For reference, it equals about 21 percent of Pell grant program expenditures in 2017–18.26 When we exclude students who were enrolled exclusively online prior to March (who are not counted by the CARES Act’s allocation formula),27 $6.28 billion is roughly $281 per student in headcount enrollment.28

But not every institution will see $281 per student. The formula that determines each institution’s total emergency funding under the CARES Act favors those with more full-time students than part-time students and those with more Pell grant recipients. While it was right for Congress to prioritize schools with more high-need students, not all high-need students obtain the Pell grant, often due to non-completion of the FAFSA.29 And while full-time students do see greater expenses for tuition than part-time students, students of all enrollment intensities need housing, food, technology, and health care.

Pell grant uptake and enrollment intensity tend to vary based on institution type, and as a result of these factors, CARES Act emergency aid per student varies by sector.30 Community colleges, which enroll the most undergraduates of any sector and often enroll the students with the greatest financial and educational needs,31 receive $187 per student.32 This compares to $298 at nonprofit four-years, $337 at public four-years and $539 at for-profit institutions.33 There is also wide variation within the community college sector: for example, the Indiana community college system will see $123 per student,34 while 38 percent of those students live in poverty.35 For comparison, in a 2016 study of institutions’ in-house emergency grant programs, nearly two-thirds of programs had an average grant of at least $500.36

Recognizing that many low-income students will have an emergency need in excess of their institution’s average aid per student, it is clear that some rationing must take place.

Existing Guidance

On April 9, Secretary Betsy DeVos provided brief guidance to institutions preparing to receive their emergency aid allotments.37 Per the letter, institutions may each use their own system to allocate the aid to students, and they are advised to prioritize the students with the greatest need and establish an award maximum, such as the one set for the Pell grant, $6,195. Further guidance on April 21 clarified that students who are ineligible to participate in the Title IV program are ineligible for CARES Act aid, an exclusion of at least 1.5 million students,38 including undocumented immigrants, international students, and others.39

Experts at the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice have provided guidance to institutions in the context of the Department of Education (ED)’s guidance,40 building on prior recommendations in early April.41 On the question of how to allocate aid, they warn that existing financial need information (such as data from the FAFSA) may now be outdated in the wake of the pandemic, yet complex application processes are likely to dissuade participation. They recommend an application system that first provides aid to those experiencing a condition that would be exacerbated by the pandemic—such as facing food or housing insecurity, or providing for a child—and they recommend that award amounts increase with need. They also advise that institutions with less aggregate need provide some of their share of aid to those with greater need.

MDRC has also offered a set of recommendations, including good ideas such as providing multiple forms of disbursement to accommodate students without bank accounts, telling students up front when to expect their aid disbursement, and offering students without internet access an opportunity to apply by phone.42

Recommendations for Program Design

Determining Title IV Aid Eligibility

The April 21 guidance from Secretary DeVos states that only students who are eligible for Title IV aid can receive CARES Act aid.43 FAFSA data is sufficient for determining this eligibility, but it is not yet clear how institutions should proceed for students who did not complete the FAFSA. The department’s guidance states explicitly that emergency aid may be given to students “who have not filed a FAFSA but who are eligible to file a FAFSA,” but further guidance is needed about how a student can show that they can file a FAFSA. According to an April 22 post, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) is uncertain about whether students can self-certify eligibility until the department provides further guidance.44

Students can still submit a FAFSA for the current academic year, but the complexity of the application will hinder many students.45 Until further guidance is provided, institutions may consider using institutional funding to meet the most pressing needs of FAFSA non-completers, such as urgent health needs.

Allowable Expenses

Secretary DeVos’s guidance notes that the aid can be used for direct educational expenses or other necessities such as food and rent, so long as the expense is within the overall cost of attendance and “related to the disruption of campus operations due to coronavirus.”46 As previously noted, existing emergency aid programs often limit allowable expenses to a certain range, even within the overall cost of attendance.47 Given the wide-ranging nature of the pandemic and the limited information about how it is impacting students, restrictions on allowable expenses within existing institutional aid programs should be lifted.

Identifying Need

As the Hope Center’s experts noted,48 FAFSA data would not be fair as a universal standard, both because needs change and because not all students complete the FAFSA. Existing FAFSA data may be useful as one way that a student could qualify for emergency aid: for example, an institution might decide that students with an expected family contribution (EFC) of zero can automatically qualify. A further benefit is that the institution would already have this data on file, enabling direct outreach.

But no individual measure captures all forms of need. Institutions might consider using a few more indicators that would qualify students for aid:

  • The Hope Center recommends prioritizing students based on the presence of personal circumstances that make campus support especially needed, such as food or housing insecurity.49 These are worth using, especially because they reflect students’ lived experiences right now. But at institutions that don’t anticipate having the funds to support all students in these circumstances or will increase aid with need, administrators will need to determine how they will measure the severity of these circumstances and how the level of severity will impact aid. As an example, an institution expecting many students to report some form of food insecurity and seeking to target the highest-need students could ask students about the funds they have available for future meals or for upcoming (or late) rent payments.50
  • To compensate for the fact that FAFSA data for 2019–20 reflects the 2018 tax year, asking whether and how greatly the student or their family has seen drops in income (including pre-pandemic changes) can help FAFSA data reflect new circumstances.51
  • As noted previously, students who relied heavily on employment income before the pandemic are especially vulnerable at this time. Asking students how many weekly hours of employment they have lost due to the pandemic, and determining some threshold for aid eligibility such as twenty hours per week, is another option. This may also serve as a useful data point when identifying students who could qualify for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program.

Communicating with Students

As noted previously, in one survey, only half of administrators of existing programs said these programs were well-known by students.52 Especially since institutions are not all receiving CARES Act aid at the same time or using the same processes,53 students will need notification once their institution’s aid is available for students and what specifically they must do.54 This messaging should err on the side of over-broadcasting the aid availability, to ensure students don’t miss out just because they did not see an email.

In my interviews with students, I found that word of mouth through friends and personal outreach by college staff were the most powerful modes of communication. While communication through email or mass text message is necessary to ensure equal opportunity, institutions can promote person-to-person messaging through faculty (asking them to remind students about the aid at the end of lectures) or student leaders (such as student government).

The Role of Case Management

Some existing emergency aid programs require participants to complete financial literacy training,55 and the majority of programs “frequently” refer program participants to services such as personal counseling or financial aid counseling.56 These referrals may be valuable for student retention,57 especially if they guide the student to available financial resources. But at this time, treating referrals as requirements seems inappropriate, and they should be offered as suggestions only, so that they do not serve as a barrier to aid access.

Supporting Students Restricted by CARES and ED Guidance

As previously mentioned, students may be categorically ineligible for CARES Act aid due to their immigration status or because they are international students. These students will have emergencies as well, and members of undocumented families will be especially vulnerable due to ineligibility for other federal stimulus support. Institutions should consider using institutional funds58 to provide for these students’ emergencies. The University of California and California State University systems have pledged to use institutional funds to provide emergency aid for students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program; other institutions and state systems should take similar actions.59

Additionally, some students’ emergencies may fall outside of the “cost of attendance” framework, like transportation to get to work amid changes to public transit. Or the student’s expense may not be caused by the disruption of campus operations, such as health care costs. These needs are still important: even if CARES Act aid cannot be applied, the institution should consider using institutional funds to meet these needs.60 These may be drawn from the institution’s Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (FSEOG) pool, so long as the student is eligible to participate in Title IV and the expense is educationally related.61

Supporting Students Denied Aid by Their Institution

Because some triaging of students will be needed, some students’ applications will be denied. Many of these students will have legitimate, urgent expenses they need help paying, and consolidating communications about the emergency program with information about other options students may help. In particular, students may have at least five other options for help:

  • If a student completed the FAFSA before the pandemic, the student can request that their institution’s financial aid administrators use a process called “professional judgement” to override certain data points on the student’s FAFSA.62 These changes may lead to the student receiving a Pell grant if they did not receive one before, or they may increase the value of the student’s existing Pell grant. An online tool called SwiftStudent was recently designed to help students initiate this conversation with their financial aid office.63
  • If the student has not submitted the FAFSA for the current academic year, they have until June 30, 2020 to apply for a Pell grant that would be applied immediately (but submitting sooner rather than later is strongly advised).64 Any assistance that the institution can provide the student with this complex process would increase the likelihood that the student can navigate it.
  • If a student has lost their job due to COVID-19, they may qualify for the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides a benefit of at least 50 percent of the median weekly benefit in the state, plus $600.65 Schools should work with the agencies in their states tasked with running the unemployment insurance program to ensure that student applications for PUA are processed appropriately.
  • While the federal food stamp program features complicated eligibility rules for students, exceptions are made for certain parents and students in certain college programs, such as those supported by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.66 Institutions should connect students to programs or platforms that help students examine their potential eligibility during the public health crisis, such as their state or local government’s program website.
  • Some institutions allow for future financial aid to be advanced in an emergency.67 If the student will be returning the following semester with institutional aid, aid advancement could be a viable option to help the student handle a short-term emergency.

These resources should also be offered to those who do receive emergency aid, since receiving the aid will not alleviate all the financial difficulties that students may be facing at this time.

Conclusion

Emergency aid plays a vital role in the financial aid system. It can put within reach the very thing that is most important for a student’s educational progress, such as broadband or a rent payment, typically without much delay. Many students will earn degrees in the coming years because the CARES Act’s funding helped them withstand this unprecedented disruption to their educational experience. Yet it is no panacea for the many ways the pandemic is widely and deeply disrupting students’ lives, particularly the most vulnerable, making an equitable approach to aid delivery essential.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jen Mishory, Robert Shireman, Carrie Welton, and Laura Keane for helpful feedback, and to Ben Miller for sharing a dataset of CARES Act allocations by institution.

Editor’s note: report was updated on May 7, 2020 to reflect a minor change in the methodology used to calculate the average emergency aid by sector.

header photo: Sophomore Sadia Demby moves her belongings through Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University on March 12, 2020 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. source: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Notes

  1. The 2015-16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey asked respondents, “How confident are you that you could come up with $2,000, from any available source, if an unexpected need arose within the next month?” Of undergraduates surveyed, 24.6 percent said they “certainly could not” come up with the money, and 25.3 percent said they “probably could not” come up with it. Of graduate students surveyed, these percentages were 12.8 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively. Additionally, the 2015–16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey asked respondents how much financial support they receive from parents. Of dependent student respondents, 22.0 percent receive none, and another 16.7 percent receive between $1 and $999 per year. See “National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey: 2016,” National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, accessed April 19, 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/index.aspx
  2. For example, the Panther Retention Grant program at Georgia State University, a program that waives tuition and fee balances of up to $2,500 (the average Panther Retention grant is $900). See Jamaal Abdul-Alim, “Retention Grant Keeping Dreams Alive at Georgia State,” Diverse Education, April 14, 2016, https://diverseeducation.com/article/83351/.
  3. In one survey of students who left college without a degree, 54 percent reported that “I needed to go to work and make money” was a major reason for leaving; 31 percent reported that “I just couldn’t afford the tuition and fees” was a major reason. See Jean Johnson, Jon Rochkind, Amber N. Ott, and Samantha DuPont, “With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College,” Public Agenda, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2009, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507432.pdf.
  4. Eric Bettinger, “How Financial Aid Affects Persistence,” in ed. Caroline M. Hoxby, College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, September 2004, https://www.nber.org/chapters/c10101.pdf.
  5. However, aid supplements delivered across-the-board in a tumultuous time could also be considered emergency aid, and students would not need to apply for this aid.
  6. In a survey of emergency aid programs in Texas, the majority of emergency grant programs reported an average application processing time of one to two days. See “The Texas Emergency Aid Report: Advocating for Emergency Aid Programs in Higher Education,” Austin, TX: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2018, http://www.60x30tx.com/media/1453/emergency-aid-report.pdf.
  7. In this study of emergency aid programs, 73 percent of programs were to a great extent intended to eliminate barriers to student success, and 65 percent of programs were intended to a great extent to retain students. (Another leading objective was “Addressing emergencies from a humanitarian perspective,” but this is arguably separate from educational objectives.) These percentages resemble findings from a study of Texas emergency aid programs: “The Texas Emergency Aid Report: Advocating for Emergency Aid Programs in Higher Education,” Austin, TX: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2018, http://www.60x30tx.com/media/1453/emergency-aid-report.pdf.
  8. Emergency aid may also be good for institutions’ bottom lines. While they do not appear to be intended to boost their institution’s finances, programs that specifically target students with unpaid tuition balances have reported that the subsequent tuition and fees paid by grant recipients exceed program costs and thus represent a positive return on investment. See page 3 of “Foiling the Drop-out Trap: Completion Grant Practices for Retaining and Graduating Students,” Coalition of Urban Serving Universities and Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, 2016, https://www.aplu.org/library/foiling-the-drop-out-trap-completion-grant-practices-for-retaining-and-graduating-students/File.
  9. Sara Goldrick-Rab has pointed out that the emergency aid program studied in the RCT featured rules that limited the number of students who could benefit and the kinds of expenses that qualify, leading to weak take-up and relatively small grant amounts. See Sara Goldrick-Rab, “Beyond the Food Pantry: Guide to Emergency Grant Aid Distribution,” Philadelphia, PA: The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, April 2020, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BTFP_COVID19_EmergencyAid.pdf.
  10. William N. Evans, Melissa S. Kearney, Brendan Perry, and James X. Sullivan, “A Cautionary Tale about Emergency Financial Assistance without Services: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial Evaluation at a Community College,” AEA Papers and Proceedings 2019, 109: 218–222, May 2019, https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20191014/.
  11. Psychological benefits have been previously noted as a potential effect of emergency aid programs. See page 39, Sandy Baum, Marie McDemmond, and Gigi Jones, “Institutional Strategies for Increasing Affordability and Success for Low-Income Students in the Regional Public Four-Year Sector: Tuition and Financial Aid,” Washington, DC: HCM Strategists, July 2014, http://hcmstrategists.com/maximizingresources/images/Tuition_Paper.pdf.
  12. According to one sample, at least 30 percent of emergency aid programs are less than five years old. See page 17 of Kevin Kruger, Amelia Parnell, and Alexis Wesaw, “Landscape Analysis of Emergency Aid Programs,” NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, 2016, https://www.naspa.org/images/uploads/main/Emergency_Aid_Report.pdf.
  13. To be sure, the efficacy of emergency aid overall is not seriously in doubt. For example, one survey of emergency aid programs in Texas found that, of those that have evaluated the outcomes of aid recipients, about three-in-four found positive impacts on students’ persistence and/or completion. See page 25 of “The Texas Emergency Aid Report: Advocating for Emergency Aid Programs in Higher Education,” Austin, TX: Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2018, http://www.60x30tx.com/media/1453/emergency-aid-report.pdf.
  14. A bill in the Texas legislature in 2019 would have created a state-funded emergency aid program, supporting programs at institutions serving a high percentage of low-income students. The bill did not pass, however. See Ashley Clark, “What Works for Today’s Students—Microgrants,” Washington, DC: Higher Learning Advocates, January 2020, https://tacc.org/sites/default/files/documents/2020-02/microgrants-policy-brief.pdf.
  15. As this report will describe, one important eligibility is undocumented status.
  16. Kevin Kruger, Amelia Parnell, and Alexis Wesaw, “Landscape Analysis of Emergency Aid Programs,” NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, 2016, https://www.naspa.org/images/uploads/main/Emergency_Aid_Report.pdf.
  17. Ibid.
  18. See page 16, Karole Dachelet & Sara Goldrick-Rab, “Investing in Student Completion: Overcoming Financial Barriers to Retention Through Small-Dollar Grants and Emergency Aid Programs,” Madison, WI: Wisconsin Hope Lab, December 2015, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Investing-in-Student-Completion-WI-Hope_Lab.pdf
  19. Christine Baker-Smith, Vanessa Coca, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Elizabeth Looker, Brianna Richardson, and Tiffani Williams, “#RealCollege 2020: Five Years of Evidence on Campus Basic Needs Insecurity,” Philadelphia, PA: The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, revised February 2020, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019_RealCollege_Survey_Report.pdf.
  20. Ibid.
  21. Although data specific to students is not yet available, unemployment for those aged 20-24 increased in March 2020 by the largest single-month amount since 1953, reaching 8.7 percent. Dan Burns, “How the coronavirus job cuts played out by sector and demographics,” Reuters, April 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-jobs/how-the-coronavirus-job-cuts-played-out-by-sector-and-demographics-idUSKBN21M0EL.
  22. Of students who work while enrolled, 34 percent work in sales and office support occupations, and 26 percent work in food and personal services occupations. While there is some mismatch in how the data sources below categorize sectors, it is telling that bars and restaurants saw 419,000 lost jobs in March 2020 and “business and professional services” and “retail trade” lost about 50,000 jobs each.
    Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, Michelle Melton, and Eric W. Price, “Learning While Earning: The New Normal,” Washington, DC: The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, 2015, https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/workinglearners/#full-report. Amrita Khalid, “Restaurant and bars account for more than half of the US jobs lost in March,” Quartz, April 4, 2020, https://qz.com/1832789/bars-and-restaurants-account-for-60-percent-of-all-us-jobs-lost-in-march/.
  23. Jen Mishory and Andrew Stettner, “Unemployment Insurance and Young People in the Wake of COVID-19,” New York, NY: The Century Foundation, April 23, 2020, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/unemployment-insurance-young-people-wake-covid-19/.
  24. Lee Gardner, “How College Leaders Are Planning for the Fall,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2020, https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-College-Leaders-Are/248554.
  25. Young people can also contract COVID-19, and up to one-fifth of COVID-19 patients who are aged 20-44 are hospitalized. This is not to mention the students who are above the age of 45, comprising 5.3 percent of undergraduates and 11.6 percent of graduate students, for whom COVID-19 is a greater health risk (figures from NPSAS 2016). Many students are also essential workers, such as grocery store clerks and medical personnel, who are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. Emergency aid may play a role in paying for some medical expenses for these students, although emergency aid should not be thought of as a substitute for health insurance. Sharon Begley, “New analysis breaks down age-group risk for coronavirus — and shows millennials are not invincible,” STAT, March 18, 2020, https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/18/coronavirus-new-age-analysis-of-risk-confirms-young-adults-not-invincible/.
  26. In 2017–18, the Pell grant program delivered $29.47 billion to students in today’s dollars. As another point of reference, at its highest point in the recession the Pell grant program delivered $40.94 billion in today’s dollars. Data from “Federal Pell Grant Program 2017-2018 End of Year Report,” Office of Postsecondary Education, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, n.d., accessed April 21, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/finaid/prof/resources/data/pell-data.html.
  27. The CARES Act excludes students enrolled exclusively online in its institutional allocation formula, presumably on the assumption that the closures of college campuses would not affect these students. The guidance from the Education Department does not prohibit institutions from providing emergency aid to those students, but we do not assume here that institutions will.
  28. While $281 is the exact result of our calculations, the word “roughly” is used because the data used in these calculations reflects 2017-18 enrollment rather than 2019–20 enrollment. Note, as well, that we use full-time enrollment as the denominator in calculating average aid per student. This is guided by the Education Department guidance that institutions have one year to exhaust the funds. In addition, the Hope Center has recommended that institutions consider delivering aid over a period of time, such as nine months, to continue to meet the greatest needs of students. However, some institutions may exhaust their funding in the spring semester. When just one semester of enrollment is used as the denominator (e.g. Fall 2018 enrollment), then average aid per student increases.
  29. Other high-need students do not complete the FAFSA because they are ineligible for federal Title IV aid, such as undocumented students. The Education Department has clarified that these students may not receive CARES Act aid, which will be described later in this report.
  30. This analysis uses IPEDS data, with the sector data provided in John Fink and Davis Jenkins, “Shifting Sectors: How a Commonly Used Federal Datapoint Undercounts Over a Million Community College Students,” Community College Research Center, New York, NY: Teachers College Columbia University, April 30, 2020, https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/easyblog/shifting-sectors-community-colleges-undercounting.html#.XqrK5t62Lvc.twitter.
  31. Richard Kahlenberg et al., “Recommendations for Providing Community Colleges with the Resources They Need,” New York, NY: The Century Foundation, April 25, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/recommendations-providing-community-colleges-resources-need/.
  32. Not including those enrolled exclusively online.
  33. Not including those enrolled exclusively online.
  34. Not including those enrolled exclusively online.
  35. Analysis by NPSAS 2016 using income as a percentage of poverty. “National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, 2016 Undergraduates,” National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, accessed April 19, 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/index.aspx.
  36. Kevin Kruger, Amelia Parnell, and Alexis Wesaw, “Landscape Analysis of Emergency Aid Programs,” NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, 2016, https://www.naspa.org/images/uploads/main/Emergency_Aid_Report.pdf.
  37. Letter from Secretary Betsy DeVos to college and university presidents, Office of Postsecondary Education, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, April 9, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/caresactgrantfundingcoverletterfinal.pdf.
  38. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “More than a million college students will be shut out of emergency grant program,” The Washington Post, April 21, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/21/more-than-million-college-students-will-be-shut-out-emergency-grant-program/.
  39. “Frequently Asked Questions about the Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students under Section 18004 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, April 21, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/heerfstudentfaqs.pdf.
  40. Sara Goldrick-Rab and Carrie R. Welton, “Beyond the Food Pantry: Maximizing the Impact of CARES Emergency Aid Funds for Students,” Philadelphia, PA: The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, April 16, 2020, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BTFP_COVID19_CARES_EA.pdf.
  41. Sara Goldrick-Rab, “Beyond the Food Pantry: Guide to Emergency Grant Aid Distribution,” Philadelphia, PA: The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, April 2020, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BTFP_COVID19_EmergencyAid.pdf.
  42. Evan Weissman and Julia Schmidt, “Providing Emergency Aid to College Students in a Time of Crisis,” New York, NY: MDRC, April 20, 2020, https://www.mdrc.org/publication/providing-emergency-aid-college-students-time-crisis.
  43. “Frequently Asked Questions about the Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students under Section 18004 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, April 21, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/heerfstudentfaqs.pdf.
  44. “Trending AskRegs Q&A: How Do We Apply Title IV-Eligible Student Guidance for CARES Act Grants to Students?,” National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, April 22, 2020, https://www.nasfaa.org/news-item/21657/Trending_AskRegs_Q_A_How_Do_We_Apply_Title_IV-Eligible_Student_Guidance_for_CARES_Act_Grants_to_Students.
  45. The FAFSA’s complexity has been well-documented. For example, see Kim Cook, Kristin Hultquist, Bridget Terry Long and Judith Scott-Clayton, “FAFSA: Ask any college student. The federal student aid application is needlessly complex.,” USA Today, December 5, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/12/05/fafsa-ask-any-college-student-federal-student-aid-application-column/2598151001/.
  46. Letter from Secretary Betsy DeVos to college and university presidents, Office of Postsecondary Education, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, April 9, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/caresactgrantfundingcoverletterfinal.pdf.
  47. Karole Dachelet & Sara Goldrick-Rab, “Investing in Student Completion: Overcoming Financial Barriers to Retention Through Small-Dollar Grants and Emergency Aid Programs,” Madison, WI: Wisconsin Hope Lab, December 2015, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Investing-in-Student-Completion-WI-Hope_Lab.pdf
  48. Sara Goldrick-Rab and Carrie R. Welton, “Beyond the Food Pantry: Maximizing the Impact of CARES Emergency Aid Funds for Students,” Philadelphia, PA: The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, April 16, 2020, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BTFP_COVID19_CARES_EA.pdf.
  49. Ibid.
  50. Screening for homelessness would also be appropriate here.
  51. Another way to frame this is in terms of employment statuses: was the student or a family member who financially supports their education laid off or furloughed as of the date of the student’s application?
  52. Karole Dachelet & Sara Goldrick-Rab, “Investing in Student Completion: Overcoming Financial Barriers to Retention Through Small-Dollar Grants and Emergency Aid Programs,” Madison, WI: Wisconsin Hope Lab, December 2015, https://hope4college.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Investing-in-Student-Completion-WI-Hope_Lab.pdf
  53. Michael Stratford, “Less than 1 percent of federal emergency cash for college students doled out,” Politico Pro, April 20, 2020, https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2020/04/less-than-1-percent-of-federal-emergency-cash-for-college-students-doled-out-1917590.
  58. According to ED guidance, this may not include dollars from the Institutional Portion of CARES Act aid. See “Frequently Asked Questions about the Emergency Financial Aid Grants to Students under Section 18004 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, April 21, 2020, https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/caresact.html.
  59. This could also include support for undocumented students who are not DACA recipients.
    Kery Murakami, “DACA Students to Get Emergency Aid From California Systems,” Inside Higher Ed, April 29, 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/29/university-california-and-cal-state-give-emergency-aid-daca-students.
  60. Again, this may not include dollars from the Institutional Portion of CARES Act aid.
  61. Thanks to Carrie Welton for this suggestion. Here, it is important to emphasize that students who are ineligible to participate in Title IV aid cannot receive FSEOG dollars. This includes the students identified in the prior paragraph, such as international and undocumented immigrant students.
  62. For a short summary of the professional judgement process, see Mark Kantrowitz, “Professional judgement,” FinAid.org, n.d., accessed April 20, 2020, https://www.finaid.org/educators/pj/.
  63. For more information about the SwiftStudent tool, see “SwiftStudent Financial Aid Tool,” Institute for Women’s Policy Research, n.d., accessed April 20, 2020, https://iwpr.org/swiftstudent/.
  64. See Mollie Allen, “FAFSA Deadline for 2019-2020,” Edvisors, n.d., accessed April 20, 2020, https://www.edvisors.com/fafsa/eligibility/filing-fafsa-deadline-2019-2020/.
  65. Jen Mishory and Andrew Stettner, “Unemployment Insurance and Young People in the Wake of COVID-19,” New York, NY: The Century Foundation, April 23, 2020, https://tcf.org/content/commentary/unemployment-insurance-young-people-wake-covid-19/.
  66. “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Students,” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, November 7, 2013, https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/students.
  67. “7 Options to Consider if You Didn’t Receive Enough Financial Aid,” Federal Student Aid, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, August 7, 2015, https://blog.ed.gov/2015/08/7-options-to-consider-if-you-didnt-receive-enough-financial-aid/.

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