Supporting Students Who are "Paying the Price"

About a year ago, I was staffing the registration/information carrel at a leadership conference during lunch, making sure everything was in order before the next block of breakout sessions. A student walked up to where a colleague and I were sitting, and asked quietly, "Do you know if there's any leftover food?"

My colleague asked, "Did you not get to eat?"

His reply is admittedly less clear in my memory, but I remember thinking as he spoke, "he may not have dinner if we can't drum something up."

I'd faced this scenario on campus many times before, and my first instinct was always defensiveness: we plan for who comes to the event! You can't complain about us running out if you come late! It's not our job to provide you food! But as I stood as an observer of this conversation, I started to look at it a little differently. As I read Sara Goldrick-Rab's latest book Paying the Price, I was reminded of the student at the registration table- and educated on what his circumstances might be, and how essential that act of goodwill might have been to his ability to learn.

Without giving too much away (because you need to read the book), I will share that Sara's book uses a unique strategy that helps this complicated issue come to life: she shares tables and data from her longitudinal study of Pell-eligible students in Wisconsin who have also received grant money from a state-run program, but also shares real interviews (not composites) from six students who were tracked over the course of the study. The strategy is a powerful one, because it gives a voice and visible impact to the numbers and statistics that are shared. For those who work with students on a day-to-day basis, it provides a clear and at times difficult to read window into just how much they deal with.

Gone are the days where students are able to devote their time to on-campus pursuits worry-free. These students, and many others I've gotten to work with, are juggling far more than we give them credit for. They work - not just for spending money, but to put themselves through their programs. They intern, with hopes that these experiences and connections will pay off after graduation. When possible, they participate in extracurricular pursuits to build social connections and additional managerial skills. And they worry. They worry about the many obstacles that could get in the way of their education. They worry about the security of their accommodations. They worry about the expectations of their families, and how to ensure they're meeting them. They worry about the cost of it all- both financial, and emotional.

Sara poses some outstanding potential solutions that can be advocated for on a local and national level, including a reimagining of how work study aid is distributed across institutions and an extension of the National School Lunch program into the higher education space. But what can we do locally? If we run into these students, as I did at with a student at this conference, how can we help? Through my lens of student activities, I see a few possible measures that could be taken to reduce the burden of our most vulnerable students:

First things first: interrogate that first instinct. I'm guilty of it. Recognizing that the ability to pursue a college education is a privilege, is not the same as assuming that it's one easily obtained. No matter what type of institution you work at, or the population of students you work with, you will encounter students who are struggling. They may not let on right away, and they may not admit to it when asked, but they're there. And when they pose questions about additional resources, like food or on-campus employment or even extra time, keep that possibility for struggle in mind. One of my favorite business authors Bruce Kasanoff encapsulates it best with one of his mantras that I try to live as often as possible: "First, help this person."

Rethink the "prize culture" that currently exists on campus. The things we try to get students to do for Beats by Dre headphones. It was iPads before that, and iPods before that. It's not to say that these prizes don't have value or the ability to create a draw. They do. That's why we use them. But what else can we offer that provides a more practical draw. I think about things like parking passes - which can cost a pretty penny on some campuses - or public transit passes (particularly if, as on some campuses I've worked on, discounted options aren't available for residential students), high value bookstore, grocery store, gas station, or Amazon gift cards, or printing money if your campus works on a deducted account system. If you charge for events, consider a "season pass" for students who may want to attend these events but can't afford the expendable income to get tickets. Instead of looking at "What shiny thing can we give students to get them to participate?", instead think "What costs do they regularly incur that we can take care of?" This isn't always appropriate or possible, but broaching the question may affect how others in your department think, and affect what students you reach.

Explore how office collaborations and resource sharing can streamline our most cumbersome processes. If you follow Sara on Twitter, you may notice that she often retweets students who express their difficulty filling out the FAFSA, a flawed but essential form for obtaining financial assistance. It is a cumbersome document even if you have all the information needed to complete it, and becomes even harder to finish if you have to fish or dig for information. And this is far from the only process that students could be participating in to ease their financial burdens. Organizations like Single Stop have created a model where applications for a wide variety of assistance programs can be completed in one place. Think SNAP, healthcare, and financial assistance applications...all in one place.

How can you streamline processes like this, or more institution-specific ones, to minimize the feeling that students have of being "bounced around," or having to spend long periods finding the many offices that have what they're looking for? Maybe once a month these offices come together and work from a central campus space. Maybe they travel to residence hall lobbies periodically, or to commuter or veteran lounges to increase their visibility on campus.

With a goal of making lives easy, you build trust and strong relationships with students- and these factors will increase the likelihood that they'll persist, that all the money, time, and worry will yield a degree in the end.

Have you read Sara's book yet? What did you think? What other tips do you have for supporting students struggling with the cost of their education?