College aid — the daunting calculus

New tool aims to help make sense of it all

October 30, 2011|By Mary Carmichael, Globe Staff

Akeasia Edwards, 18, her mother, Cindy Lewis, and Brooke Fincke, head counselor… (Kayana Szymczak for The…)

Akeasia Edwards wants to go to college. When she walks into City on a Hill charter school in Roxbury, the goal is right in front of her: “COLLEGE’’ shouts in 15-foot letters on the wall. What she can’t see as clearly is how much that dream will cost.

Colleges do not assemble students’ financial aid packages until the spring acceptance season. The fall application process is like ordering from a menu with no prices - except that the menu is huge and the choice may be life-changing.

But for Edwards and the nation’s other 3 million aspiring college freshmen, this fall may mark a break from the uncertainty of the past.

In accordance with a federal mandate that took effect yesterday, all colleges now offer tools on their websites that help students assess the true price of their degrees by subtracting financial aid estimates from tuition.

The Department of Education has introduced a spate of reforms since the passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, most of them intended to make the finances of college attendance easier to parse. The new “net price calculators’’ are part of that initiative.

Advocates say the calculators will help college-bound students make better decisions about where they enroll and how they pay for their education. The argument resonates as the nation’s collective student debt approaches $1 trillion.

But critics say the calculators can be more confusing than enlightening.

For families like Edwards’s, knowing the true price of college is especially critical. Her mother, Cindy Lewis, faithfully puts $150 in a college fund every month, but with an income of $25,840, paying the bill over four years will require sacrifices.

So last week, Edwards and her mother, a teacher’s aide, took a deep breath, sat down at a computer, and tried to figure out just what the bill will be. With the help of two financial aid counselors at City on a Hill, they tried five net price calculators. They encountered a few surprises and one wrenching disappointment. They were glad to have the information - better to find out now than later.

But they also felt they needed to know much more.

The calculators start with sticker price - tuition plus room and board. Then they subtract permutations of possible aid, from federal grants to institutional scholarships, based on financial and academic data students type in. The remaining net price approximates out-of-pocket costs.

Brooke Fincke, City on a Hill’s head counselor, explained that Edwards would have two factors in her favor: good grades and high need. The calculators might help her rule out some schools or make others look more attractive.

Edwards took out a wish list of 21 schools.