The alarm has sounded on college access: it's getting louder and it’s time to respond.

‘In short, low-income students from traditional underrepresented backgrounds, especially low-income, are not applying to college this year.’

Recently Jenny Rickard, CEO of The Common Application, wrote a piece on LinkedIn summarizing some very scary data--if you are a college access advocate--about application trends for the fall of 2021. In short, low-income students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds are not applying to college this year, or they are limiting their options considerably by narrowing the number of colleges to which they are applying. Citing a 7% decline in low-income students applying, Rickard’s post was sounding an alarm that should concern all of us.

The information gathered and shared by The Common Application mirrors what we know about FAFSA filing trends this year, too. Currently, FAFSA filing nationwide is down in the range of approximately 12% compared with last year (that’s about 150,000 students). This of course is happening at the same time a number of states are requiring submission of the FAFSA as a high school graduation requirement.

Some, including a number of consultants with whom I work at Augustana College, chalk these troubling trends up to an acceleration of the “demographic cliff” Nathan Grawe predicted in his book. But, I seem to recall that one of his predictions was an increasing population of low-income and traditionally underrepresented students seeking admission to college, even while overall trends are on a decline.

That’s not what we are seeing.

We are seeing something far more troubling, both for college enrollments and for our country in general. Here’s a universal truth of college admissions: 100% of the students who don’t apply to college, don’t go to college.

Action is required now if we want to make a difference for the fall of 2021.

For me it’s especially real, given the nearly 500-application deficit, which is about 40% behind last year, in my applicant pool among black and Latinx students.

Admissions professionals need to go all-in to try to reverse this disturbing trend we are seeing for low-income and traditionally underrepresented students—and we need to do it now.

Here are some things that might help:

National application fee waiver until March 1--There are plenty of efforts in place to ensure needy students can get a fee waiver, but maybe we need to eliminate the rigamarole for the year and create a national movement wherein applications fees to all colleges are suspended until March 1, 2021. No need to ask The Common Application or College Board for a fee waiver, because colleges and universities automatically waive the fee for all applicants in an effort to encourage more students in these important populations to apply. Let’s do this!

Transparency about the proportion of applicants admitted without standardized tests--Our public is very suspicious about the explosion of test-optional admissions programs. We need to convince students and parents that we don’t need a test score to make good admissions decisions. Just this week, I reported in a campus update that 52% of our offers to date were to students with NO test scores on record, compared with 15% last year under our test-optional admissions program. We need to show a doubt-filled public that we are serious about what we’ve told them we plan to do this year. This should be easy for us to do.

Fast applications--I know “fast applications” often have a bad rap among school counselors and I acknowledge those concerns and the deficiencies of these marketed applications. But, I’d do anything right now to get more of these students who are not applying to apply to college--mine, yours or someone else’s. We need to make applying easy and convenient, and fast applications have some benefits. Let’s eliminate unnecessary hurdles associated with the application process in the name of access.

Application and FAFSA submission workshops all the time and everywhere--To all the struggling, overworked and overwhelmed school counselors and CBO advocates, take this as your invitation to reach out to admissions officers everywhere to host online application and FAFSA filing workshops for your students. Thousands of college admissions officers are willing to help you in your important work to get students to take the right steps to apply for college and submit the FAFSA. Let us help you; we stand ready and want to help, especially when it comes to low-income and traditionally underrepresented students. Give your local Office of Admission and call and let’s work together to reach students who haven’t yet applied.

Public and celebrity advocacy for the benefits of college--Right now, more than ever, we need celebrities and the general public to be advocates for the benefits of a college education to inspire a generation of students who are struggling to realize this. In the midst of a pandemic, a summer of unrest and a turbulent election season, we need to remind everyone that college graduates tend to be more involved civically, have better employment opportunities over the course of a lifetime, and are generally healthier people. We need more public advocacy for college and we need to make more public the important advocacy we have, such as former First Lady Michelle Obama’s work around college selection. We can’t let this generation of students miss out on the benefits of college education.

While we may not be able to do all of this collectively, perhaps bits and pieces of this agenda can be implemented where sensible. And it needs to happen now to make a difference for these students we all want and need in our classrooms.

Jenny Rickard sounded the alarm, but it’s up to the rest of us to actually make something happen for these students. It starts with students seeing themselves in college and getting them to apply.