{"id":12073,"date":"2020-09-03T16:59:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T16:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=12073"},"modified":"2020-09-03T16:59:38","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T16:59:38","slug":"covid-19-and-the-high-cost-of-college-for-older-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=12073","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 and the high cost of college for older students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The gap in equitable access to affordable postsecondary education across race and income levels is expected to worsen due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality and Lumina Foundation. <\/em><\/strong>Photo: bls.gov<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


By ROZ BROWN
<\/strong>Texas News Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSTIN, Texas — Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, college students were derailed from graduating due to the high cost of housing, food and transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a new study<\/a> shows unexpected expenses often challenge older students to enroll and stay enrolled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Older students, defined as those ages 25 to 45, make up nearly a third of the first-time undergraduate student body overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sara Goldrick-Rab, founder of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice<\/a>, said cost estimates by some colleges can be “wildly wrong.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s evidence that for the for-profit colleges, when the government started holding them accountable they started lowering their costs, but they didn’t lower their tuition; they just lowered the estimated cost of living while you go there,” Goldrick-Rab said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said colleges often cite housing when they advertise that they’re less expensive, even though housing costs continue to rise in nearly every state and only 15% of American undergraduates live on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said nowadays, almost one in four college students has a child, and need to factor day care into their college costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other unexpected costs that can derail an older college student include changing majors, which typically requires new books and supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goldrick-Rab said students and parents usually do their homework when it comes to affordability, but explained a situation parents find themselves in all too often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We looked at the meal-plan prices, and we bought something we thought was affordable, and it’s giving her 12 meals a week out of the 21, and she’ll just fend for herself for the others, but she actually doesn’t have enough money to cover the others,” Goldrick-Rab said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goldrick-Rab added parents may think a student is saving money by living at home, but might qualify for more financial aid if they lived closer to campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ROZ BROWNTexas News Service AUSTIN, Texas — Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, college students were derailed from graduating due to the high cost of housing, food and transportation. Now, a new study shows unexpected expenses often challenge older students to enroll and stay enrolled. Older students, defined as those ages 25 to 45, make up nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12074,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12073\/revisions\/12074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}