That was the only way that she could cover her expenses at home without having “to stop school and look for a full-time job,” she said. She works 20 hours a week at BCC and 15 hours a week in a work-study position at Lehman. Yuderka and her children have had to make many sacrifices, and she has incurred nearly $50,000 in student loan debt. That’s it,” Casey said.ĭeciding to go back to school and following “my dream to get my education has not been easy,” said Yuderka, an adult Latinx student who enrolled in Lehman College in New York after completing an associate degree at Bronx Community College (BCC). “I could cover a $20 emergency right now. She has had to sell personal items and scrap metal to make ends meet, almost had to drop a course because she couldn’t afford a $400 textbook, and finds it difficult to get her schoolwork done without being able to afford internet access at home. In one example outlined in the study, Casey, a 31-year-old student and single mother in the paralegal studies program at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, is barely scraping by. “These are exactly the students that financial aid was designed to support, but for too long, our system has failed to make a college education truly affordable for low-income and working-class students.” Barely getting by “Over the course of this research, we have had an incredible opportunity to connect with talented, motivated college students who are making enormous sacrifices to complete their education and make a critical investment for themselves, their families and their communities,” said IHEP President Michelle Asha Cooper. It identifies opportunities for policymakers and institutional leaders to support all students through completion in ways that are grounded in students’ experiences and the affordability challenges they face. That’s the basis of a new report on college affordability by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), which includes the perspectives and aspirations of 17 low-income and working-class college students interviewed over two semesters. Real-life stories from students struggling to make ends meet help to contextualize and illuminate the financial barriers to college access and success.
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