The Hetchinger Report College Toolbox is a suite of tools designed to help students and families demystify the often opaque process of choosing the right college, understanding college financial aid and what it will cost to earn a degree. While structured to allow comparisons between institutions, Hetchinger Reports stresses that this is “not a ranking, and will never be a ranking.” Rather, the goal is to provide students and families with the information they need to make good decisions.
Shedding Light On College Financial Aid And Costs
Despite mandated data sets reported through the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) and available through resources like the College Scorecard, colleges are anything but transparent in their communications with students. In a world where 25% of students will not return after their first year, where tuition is frequently discounted, and where competing sets of rankings produce very different results, it is not surprising that colleges try to preserve a certain sense of mystery.
The College Tollbox consists of four tools designed to unvravel these mysteries.
- The TuitionTracker shows the difference between a college’s sticker price and the actual cost of attending. Select a college and the tool will show what students from different income groups have paid for tuition. Information is also provided on admission rate, the percentage who pay list price, and the likelihood of completing your degree within six years of starting–a significant factor when determining how prudent an investment a given college might be.
- The College Welcome Guide provides a series of interactive charts designed to allow students to look beyond academic and social-life reputations to explore what actually matters to them. This system composites data mainly from IPEDS and the College Scorecard but includes other sources as well such as the College Free Speech Rankings. Served up in easy-to-navigate charts and tables, the system allows students to compare different institutions they might be interested in to see if there are any concerns or to uncover hidden strengths.
- The Offer Letter Decoder allows students to upload any offer letters they receive for analysis. It clearly delineates loans, work-study, and grants/scholarships and unpacks any opaque abbreviations. The goal is for students to understand exactly what they will be responsible for and how they will be responsible so that they can compare the actual costs of attending one institution rather than another.
- The College Clousre Tracker provides details on the 800 post-secondary institutions that have closed since 2008.
College Financial Aid And Costs Are Opaque
One might wonder why such tools are needed. A report in 2023 from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified that most colleges are not following best practices for providing clear and standard information in their financial aid offers. According to GAO’s review of a nationally representative sample of colleges, nearly two-thirds follow half or fewer of the 10 best practices. No college in GAO’s sample followed all 10. For example, according to best practices, a college should estimate the net price—how much a student will need to pay to attend that college—by deducting only grants and scholarships from all key costs (e.g., tuition, fees, housing and meals, books, and living expenses). However, GAO found that 41 percent of colleges do not include a net price leaving it to students to figure out how much they will ultimately pay. Worse still, an estimated 50 percent of colleges understate the net price. Many colleges exclude key costs that students are responsible for while factoring in loans that must be repaid. These omissions and inclusions make college appear less expensive than it is.
Over 800 post-secondary institutions have closed since 2008. With demographic factors suggesting that more closures are likely in the future, colleges are under pressure to paint the rosiest picture possible for their applicants even while financial realities lead to program and service reductions. An important but often overlooked part of deciding to attend college is having a reasonable expectation that the college will still be in business when you finish your degree. After all, much of the implied value comes not just from the content you will learn or even the experiences you will have but from the wider social network the college represents. Students who attend colleges that close lose out on these benefits. Moreover, even though colleges will have “teach out” agreements with other institutions, which, in theory, stand ready to accept their students in the event of a closure, the reality is that students at universities that close seldom finish their degrees, and universities that receive students from failing universities are themselves likely to fail.
Other tools exist to help families track the health of colleges they are considering. For a simple report-card style letter grade, Forbes provides its College Financial Grades. A total of 876 private, non-profit colleges that enroll at least 500 students are graded based on information distilled from the latest available financial data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
College Financial Aid Tools – Are Students Using Them?
I asked Jon Marcus from Hetchinger Reports how students and families learn about the College Toolbox. He said that students find these tools in articles, recommendations from high school college counselors, teachers, and through social media. Interest tends to pick up in the fall when people are thinking about applying and in the spring when offers and financial aid letters are received. When asked if colleges are directing students to these tools, Marcus said that he had not heard of any doing it, adding that he was not surprised because colleges have no interest in people having this information.
Even though the federal government requires all colleges eligible for federal financial aid to have a net price calculator on their website, many colleges either do not post it or make it difficult to find. “Colleges are good at keeping things opaque,” Marcus said. Similarly, colleges often present statistics about their graduates’ outcomes as if they are comprehensive studies, rather than just summary results of students who completed a survey.
A college education is one of the largest investments of time and money that most people will make in their lives. College financial aid is a significant factor in this investment. It is imparative that people do their own research to understand what they are buying and what the ultimate value is likely to be. Finding reliable advice often requires looking outside of your school. The College Toolbox does an excellent job of making this information accessible and should ultimately help students and their families make better-informed decisions.