The Feminist Financial Handbook. Brynne Conroy
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in the recent past, if you are a low- or middle-income adult, there’s a high likelihood that you could go back to school for free. In fact, you may even be able to get paid to pursue an education.
That means no student loan debt. It means not stressing out over how you’re going to pay for books.
It means you can do this.
Choosing a School
There are several different types of colleges out there, and not all are priced equally. Keep an open mind about all of your options as you consider reentering the halls of scholarship.
Community College
Community college is typically the most affordable option. It’s also the one likely to net you the most money. If you don’t have a two-year degree yet, it’s not a bad idea to start here. Credits are usually cheaper at community colleges than at four-year schools, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be the only adult learner in the classroom.
State Schools
If you go to community college first, you’re likely going to want to head to a state school next. This is because state schools usually have agreements with community colleges guaranteeing credit transfer. That means you’re less likely to have to repeat any courses you already took at the community college.
State schools are subsidized by state governments. This tends to make them cheaper than private institutions, although it should be noted that since the Great Recession, states have enacted austerity policies when it comes to state school funding. This means they’ve reduced how much money they invest in the state school system. These policies have played a large role in the rising cost of college tuition.
Even with these changes in policies, state schools are still often the cheapest four-year schools for most students.
Private Four-Year Institutions
Private colleges and universities are typically among the most expensive of all your options. They don’t receive the same subsidies state schools do, and institutional aid isn’t always prolific.
That doesn’t necessarily mean a private school is off the table. You may be offered a great financial aid package or win a ton of scholarships that will cover tuition. But it does mean you need to go into the process with your eyes wide open to potential pricing differences.
Make sure your school is a nonprofit. We’ll get to why in a minute.
Ivy League Schools
The likes of Cornell and Middlebury come with astronomical sticker prices. That doesn’t mean they’re out of reach.
Ivy league schools compete for the best students, and they want the best students whether they can afford tuition or not. To facilitate student acquisition, these institutions have sizeable endowments to cover those insane sticker prices for low- and middle- income students. Some schools will give you a full ride even if your income is in the low six-figure range.
If you get into one of these schools—and most do accept nontraditional and transfer students—you’re less likely to end up with an unaffordable tuition bill than if you went to a non-Ivy private institution.
For-Profit Four-Year Schools
Be extremely wary of for-profit four-year institutions. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has sued many such colleges over the past several years. These schools tend to care less about whether you get a degree or come out of school competent enough to work in your field and more about the money they will make off of you as a student. You may find yourself being offered financing options through the school with terrible terms, and your grants and scholarships are unlikely to go as far as they would at the other four types of institutions.
It’s also important to know that shady for-profit colleges will target lower-income students. They do this because they know you’ll qualify for the maximum in grant awards after you fill out the FAFSA. They want the federal dollars you’ll bring in, but don’t always care as much about giving you a quality education.
The FAFSA
The first step in your financial aid journey is filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). You can find the application at: http://fafsa.ed.gov.
You don’t have to know exactly where you’ll be attending school to fill out the FAFSA. The most important thing is to fill it out as soon as possible. Applications open on October 1 of every year. So if you were applying for the 2020-21 school year, you would want to file your application as close to October 1, 2019, as you can.
Filling out the FAFSA used to be a tiring process that involved pulling out a hard copy of your tax return, but in recent years it’s become far easier. Now the FAFSA simply pulls your tax and income data from the IRS. The tax information will be pulled for the year before the year in which you are filling out the FAFSA. That means if you’re filling out the FAFSA in October of 2019 for the 2020-21 school year, the FAFSA will pull data from your 2018 tax return.
You will be asked if you want to enter your parents’ income information. If you’re age twenty-four or older, you are considered independent, meaning you can check the “no” box. Only your income will be counted. If you’re under the age of twenty-four, you may qualify as an independent student if:
•You’re married.
•You’re going for a master’s or doctorate degree.
•You’re currently on active duty serving in the US armed forces.
•You have children or will have children at the time you’ll be going to school. You must be providing at least 50 percent of the support for these children.
•You have other dependents who receive at least 50 percent of their support from you.
•You’re an orphan, were in foster care, or you were a dependent or ward of the court.
•You are or were an emancipated minor.
•Someone other than your parents had legal guardianship of you.
•You have been a homeless unaccompanied youth—or at risk of becoming homeless—at any point since July 1 of the year in which you are applying.
If you don’t meet any of those criteria, you’re a dependent student—whether your parents do anything to support you or not.
There are several ways you may receive aid via the FAFSA. Let’s delve into each one of them.
Pell Grants
Grants are money that you don’t have to pay back. You’d only have to pay this money back if you don’t keep your grades up.
The government issues grants based on your income. You may be surprised to learn that you can get Pell Grant funding even if you don’t consider yourself “low-income.” This is especially true if you have kids or other dependents.
We could get into the income formula here, but it’s complex and not something with which you need to be familiar. What you do need to know is that almost every single year, the government has Pell Grant money left over. There is funding available; you just have to apply for it!
For the 2018-19 school year, a full Pell Grant is $5,920. Half will be paid during the first semester, while the other half will be disbursed at the beginning of the spring semester. Keep in mind that you can get a partial Pell Grant, too, depending on your financial standing and household size.
Here’s where things get interesting: The average cost of tuition and fees at an average two-year public institution was $3,570 for the 2017-18 school year. That means that if tuition stayed the same, students attending an average community college could pocket $1,175 from their Pell Grants each semester for books, housing, transportation, and food.
Yes, you can get paid to go to school. This is an especially viable route if you are lower-income.
If you decide community college isn’t the right path for you,