In California, more than 11,000 young people with foster care history are enrolled in postsecondary education each year. These independent young adults are faced with additional barriers and challenges when pursuing postsecondary education opportunities, and most are navigating how to pay for high and rising educational expenses on their own. As a result, the experiences, needs, and outcomes of these young people differ from those of other young adults who have not experienced foster care.
Purpose
This brief seeks to describe the financial support that students with a foster care history receive to attend college compared with those of their peers in California. This brief is part of a larger body of work on foster care, postsecondary education, and financial aid, including an evaluation of the Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program.
Key Findings and Highlights
Postsecondary education is expensive. For all student groups, even after grants and expected family contributions are applied, there is still a significant amount of the cost of attendance to cover. Students with foster care history are choosing the least expensive options by mostly attending public two-year institutions and attending part time in California.
In California, most students with foster care history receive grants to help them pay for college, and for full-time students the amount they receive is about the same as the amount received by students with low incomes but without foster care history. These grants usually cover the student’s tuition and fees, but they do not cover a student’s full cost of attendance. Despite choosing less expensive schools, the cost of attendance for young people with foster care history may still be higher than that of their peers, as they often do not have the option of living with their parents while they attend school.
Students without foster care history typically have expected family contributions or familial support that can help cover costs. But considering personal or family financial resources, students with a foster care history have an income that is typically 16 percent of the poverty level compared with their peers who have family incomes at about 267 percent of the poverty level. While 68 percent of students with low incomes but without foster care history have $0 expected family contribution, they may have other familial support to rely on.
Students with foster care history want to pursue postsecondary education, but—even at lower-cost institutions—the net price is more than 100 percent of their income. Students can work, but working, and especially working full time, can be difficult; research has found negative postsecondary outcomes associated with young people with foster care history working full time while in postsecondary school.
The ETV program is meant to help bridge the gap, but it is underfunded, and the maximum allowable award is too small. The ETV program is meant to help fill this unmet need that young people formerly in foster care face because they do not have an expected family contribution and cannot live with their parents. However, California does not receive enough funding to serve all young people, and the maximum award is too low to cover all their need.
Methods
This report used data from the National Center for Education Statistics, National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, Administrative Collection: 2018, Undergraduates (NPSAS:18-AC). The NPSAS:18-AC data include administrative records from a national cross-section of students enrolled in postsecondary institutions in academic year 2017–18; they contain information on student financial aid, enrollment, demographic characteristics, institution characteristics, and income. For our analysis, we looked at postsecondary students ages 23 and younger.
To examine the financial aid experiences of young people with foster care history, we stratified the population by a variable that captures the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) question “At any time since you turned age 13, were both your parents deceased, were you in foster care, or were you a dependent or ward of the court?” This question is part of a set of questions on the FAFSA form that seek to determine a young person’s status as an independent student. A limitation to using this question to identify students with foster care history is that it will include some students who do not have foster care history but whose parents were deceased and students who were a “ward of the court” (e.g., a young person in the custody of a public child welfare agency). For brevity, we refer to this population as “students with foster care history” throughout.
Recommendations
More financial supports are needed to make postsecondary education attainable for young people with foster care history. This is particularly true if the goal is to encourage more young people with foster care history to enroll in school, attend public four-year institutions, or attend full time. Ideally, Congress would increase ETV funding to a more realistic level. Until they do, it falls to the states to make up the difference. In California, even with the majority of students with foster care history choosing two-year public institutions and enrolling part time, the typical net price after grants and expected family contribution is about $9,200. While students in extended foster care and younger than 21 may have access to $12,000 in Supervised Independent Living Placement or housing in Transitional Housing Programs, almost half of students with foster care history are not eligible because they are older than 21. Even among those younger than 21, many are not eligible for these benefits because they are not in extended foster care (e.g., they reunified with their families).
This publication is part of a broader evaluation of the ETV programs. For more information, please visit our ETV project page.