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How Calculators Can Help Counselors Help Students

October 26, 2011, 11:37 am

By Beckie Supiano

In just a few days, colleges will be required to post net-price calculators on their Web sites. In a guest post, Marvin Smith, senior associate director of financial aid at Purdue University, describes how calculators could change the financial-aid process for families. Mr. Smith  will present on this topic at a session of the College Board Forum on Wednesday.

In accordance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, by this Saturday, October 29, each postsecondary institution in the United States that participates in Title IV federal student aid programs is required to post a net-price calculator (NPC) on its Web site.

So will NPCs help families make good decisions about college choices? Or will NPCs make the financial-aid process even more confusing?  It depends on whether you see the glass as half full or half empty. I happen to be a fan of the NPC effort, so I guess I see the glass as half full. Keep in mind I am a diehard Cubs fan, so I could be accused of being a delusional optimist.

While I’m not a fan of intrusive federal regulations, I am a fan of being able to give families an idea of how much it really costs to attend college. Families deserve at least an attempt at a transparent answer to this question as they make a college attendance plan. Without an NPC, families are left to scour a college’s Web site to find sticker prices. Even the task of finding a sticker price on a college Web site can be daunting because it might be on an admissions, financial aid, or bursar page.

The pessimist—I mean, critical thinker—in me knows that the NPC effort has some inherent problems and limitations. An NPC can be difficult to use, it can only provide estimates based on historical information, and it cannot usually provide a good estimate of merit-based aid eligibility. NPC results are only as accurate as the information submitted—and remember that garbage in means garbage out. Even the name Net Price Calculator is misleading—it should be called a Net Price Estimator.

I am a fan of the education NPCs provide families. Without an NPC, families are forced to sit on pins and needles waiting for financial-aid award letters, without any idea of the mysterious criteria used to determine financial aid. For many middle-to-upper income families, the financial-aid award letter they receive in April is the first time they find out they will not qualify for grants or scholarships. Families deserve better. An NPC allows families to self-serve with an anonymous calculator and avoid developing unrealistic hopes of aid eligibility based on “expert sources” like internet advertisements, friends, or neighbors.

Some folks in the financial-aid profession are pessimistic about NPCs. Private institutions are worried that their financial-aid packaging philosophies will be divulged to competitors (probably so, but such is the age of transparency…). Some worry that an NPC may cause a backlash of ill-will if we somehow provide a family with an incorrect estimate of financial-aid eligibility. Some don’t think NPCs will be worth the effort to develop and maintain.

I am an optimist about NPCs based on my experience at Purdue. As we developed our financial aid estimator we had a few priorities: Make it easy to use, make it anonymous, and make it educational. Since the system was rolled out in August of 2008 it has consistently averaged 5,000 to 6,000 financial-aid estimates per month (except the slower months of May and June). Peak usage has neared 9,000 estimates per month. While we are not able to track the number of unique users of the system, we know Purdue families (and professional colleagues) are using it. And we know we are receiving significantly fewer phone calls from families complaining about actual financial-aid award letters in April.

The NPC requirement is part of a larger federal initiative regarding college cost transparency. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has developed a relatively new website called the College Affordability and Transparency Center at www.collegecost.ed.gov on the College Navigator website. This site maintains the average net price for first-time, full-time students who receive financial aid at each college, as well as the net price by income categories for Title IV participants, and a multiyear tuition and fees calculator for undergraduate programs.

If you visit this site you may be underwhelmed—I know I am as a financial-aid professional and the parent of a college-bound senior reviewing college costs. This site does a great job of maintaining a “naughty list” of postsecondary education “offenders” who are extra expensive or have raised tuition or net cost extra quickly. But it does not allow users to quickly review college costs for multiple schools based on information they have entered.

Yet I am also optimistic about the College Navigator site. I believe it is an underutilized gold mine of critical college information and can help consumer transparency. I hope NCES and the Department of Education see this potential too. For example, I suspect the College Navigator site could be quickly modified to allow an NPC-like experience for users. It could also be promoted as a single-stop for families exploring college costs at multiple schools.

NPCs cannot substitute for good guidance and mentoring by school counselors and college admissions and financial aid staff. These professionals play a critical role in helping students make good decisions. At the College Board National Forum, I am optimistic we will continue to have productive discussions regarding how counselors can help make the cost of college more transparent for families.

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  • charlesogletreejr

    Manning Marable was a dear friend, and his death is a profound loss to us all. I consider Manning to be the quintissential scholar activist. He was a mentor and a friend, and I learned so much by simply being in his company. We shall miss, but never forget, his scholarship, his teaching, and his advocacy. May God bless and keep his family. Charles Ogletree Jr.

  • rick1952

    gplm2000 – fair enough to call for promoting “…higher academic standards in high school and an attitude of achievement…” however, as we talk about merit, it behooves us to think very carefully about just what constitutes merit. Why is it that SAT scores track so closely with income level? If you have not done so, I recommend reading Rewarding Strivers – you will find the following about SAT scores (which are often offered as an independent measure of merit): “…the ACT and SAT…measure something simply called ‘G’, which in turn correlates almost equally with socioeconomic status and the ability to achieve a freshman grade point of 2.5 out of a possible 4.0. At best, ‘G’ is self-referential; we do not know the extent to which it measures some particular slice of innate ability, or whether it is simply a measure of socio-economic status.” (p. 101)

    We need to think carefully about what really constitutes merit, which is easier said than done. Too often what is considered “merit” is often associated with being affluent or the benefits of being affluent. Maybe we should spend more time and energy figuring out how to promote, and even inspire, achievement among all students and less time trying to sort out “worthy” from “unworthy” students. Again, I recognize the challenges this suggestion presents but I think it is a better use of our time, energy and resources. After all, it appears we aren’t doing all that well with our current sorting process.

  • prhelm1

    Add whatever savings are realized to the endowment – or to long-term contingency funds.  New hires will become senior faculty eventually, so using short-term savings to create long-term obligations is not a good strategy.  If you absolutely must spend the savings in the short-term, spend it on faculty development to incentivize faculty to try new forms of pedagogy or new curricular initiatives.

  • david_r_evans

    Prhelm, these are not short-term savings.  They are permanent, long-term savings–it’s money that’s already in the budget attached to tenured faculty lines that are going empty.  New faculty members hired at entry-level salaries will inflate the budget at precisely the same rate as the current tenured, senior faculty members, with one exception, which is the two salary increases they’d get for promotions.  Chickenfeed in the overall budget picture.

    We have millions of dollars in long-term contingency funds already, in quasi-endowment funds, various reserves, and other places.  We also already have substantially over $150k in budgeted funds for faculty development, so that’s not a pressing need either.  While out endowment could certainly be larger (which institution’s couldn’t?), it’s big enough that adding a couple hundred thousand in salary savings to it is basically immaterial.

    Any of these options is an investment in the institution’s future.  Raising salaries increases faculty satisfaction and makes it easier to recruit new faculty.  Adding faculty lines in pressing areas or in new curricular areas is likely to improve the institution’s academic quality.  Both of these outcomes are more valuable than increasing our endowment earnings by $5,000 or $10,000 per year, which is what a deposit of $200k into the endowment would do.

  • sanjoaquin

    The right anthropologist or sociologist might know a great deal about sustainability practices around the globe, and you could achieve a couple of your goals thereby.  What a nice opportunity you have in these interesting times! 

  • david_r_evans

    Sanjoaquin, my thoughts exactly.  Thanks.

  • dxg197

    I like your logic but you stopped short of saying one thing, “full-time faculty add value to the university”.  That is why hiring more faculty or giving pay equity to existing faculty is important.  By depending more on adjunct faculty we are lowering quality, making teaching less consistent and cheating our students.  Hiring full-time faculty adds value through increased enrollment, increased quality and all the faculty-lead initiatives that never get mentioned (like new and improved programs, student advising, mentoring, etc…).  Cost increases in higher education have very little to do with faculty salaries but the solution seems to be reducing the number of full-time faculty.  The result is lower quality and higher costs.  That is why people question the value of higher education.

  • http://twitter.com/CollegeHelp101 TheCollegeHelper

    Good information. I’m also a fan of the net-price calculator. College is expensive and the financial aid process is complicated, so I think this tool will help students make more educated decisions about how much debt they’re willing to take on in order to go to college (if any). I’m sure the tool will be tweaked and improved over time, but it’s definitely a good first step. Thanks for sharing!

  • rachel312

    About the economic argument for learning languages — a monolingual family member is a senior executive in an American company (Fortune 500).  As a teen and business major in college, he disdained language study, saying he just wanted a job in business in the U.S. where he could use English.  When he began with the company, to his surprise, they immediately sent him to Korea for two years.  Then Mexico. Then China. Today he not only wishes he’d learned at least some level of Spanish, Chinese or other world language, but he also hires employees who are bilingual.  He’s a senior VP and all the people in his unit are bilingual.  Even when they don’t always need the language, he says they are unarguably more sophisticated international thinkers who optimize the company’s work.

    Certainly some MBA’s will stay highly local, but the trend towards internationalization is not going away.  And some people achieve more through their international perspective, gained especially by engagement with foreign languages. 

  • jmodeste

    Oversight and active involvement in the move to establish global centers is necessary and yes, universities should go global bc this effort disseminates knowledge and learning. US education is valuable, spreading it to places where access is limited benefits all. However, the effort cannot be one of “franchising” because this smacks of capitalist desire and would undermine the legitimacy of the effort to establish global centers of learning. Meaningful oversight by those invested in education and knowledge (senior-level academic administrators and such) who partner with international peers would seem reasonable.

  • rp1953retired

    Over my 30 some years in administering international programs at both public and private institutions of higher education I have come across shocking cases of deceit and deception.  Unfortunately, where big money is involved the response to inquiries is often an unspoken “We’d rather not know.”  The folks running the programs at Dickinson State and Empire State must be amateurs. 

  • donquijote

    A recent university President and former President of ABET (a national and international accreditation organization for engineering) stated in a public address that for the first time a great deal of research is being published in languages other than English (he was referring to Chinese).  His point was simple: if we don’t learn other languages, we will miss out on that research, putting us behind. Moreover, I work a great deal with botanists and geneticists in Spain, most of whom were trained in the U.S., and even their research is not always written in English. How can learning another language be a detriment?  Hundreds of surveys have shown over and over again that if US companies had employees that were better versed in other languages and cultures, their profits would increase and they would be more competitive. Then, they state that finding these employees is difficult. Seems pretty obvious to me that learning another language makes you more competitive and better suited for the best jobs.

    And one remark to Laurence Summers’ article: for a so-called academic and former university president (not to mention a former cabinet member), he provided NO RESEARCH in his article!  Pure fiction and opinion backed by no investigation, no supporting facts, and a very poor understanding of the world and how it operates.

  • donquijote

    I wholly agree with this article and I appreciate how it talks about the hard and soft skills language learners have. But, what is unfortunate is that articles such as these do not simply state what really matters to all of those who do not speak another language or care to: if you know a second (or third) language, you make more money; your company makes more money; both are more competitive. Unfortunately, until we talk in terms of monetary gains (salaries and profits) most people could care less.  It is not until you tell a student that knowing another language and studying in another country could increase your pay by 30% or more (according to some surveys) that s/he stands up and takes note. Unfortunately again, the discussion has to center on that, or politicians, leaders, university professors, students, and others will not take note. I wish the debate could center more about how learning a language and knowing a culture enriches one’s life, but, quite simply, most people do not care.

  • jmonroe3

    Memo from L. Wittgenstein to L. Summers: “The limits of our world[s] are the limits of our language[s].” 

  • arrive2__net

    Thanks for your reply.

    In the research I cited ( again: http://www.cccco.edu/Portals/4/TRIS/research/Abstracts/Workforce%20Development/bilingual.pdf ) the effect of educational attainment was statistically controlled.

    The researchers tried to limit the affects of ethnic discrimination in the findings by including only Hispanics in the sample.  However it seems to me that many of the bilinguals may have had Spanish as their first language, and therefore would be more likely to experience discrimination based on an accent.  Since educational attainment itself was statistically controlled it should not be a factor. 

    Correlation does not prove causation, no doubt, but the main point I was making does not  require an attribution of “causation”. I’m saying that to the extent that learning the second language took time and effort, which might have been directed to other learning, the apparent absence of this “other learning” did not correlate with less income. Or, you could say it the other way around, in that population, spending time learning a second language (and thus becoming bilingual) correlated moderately with more income (outside the public sector). 

    Bart Schuster
    OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com/All.htm
    Twitter.com/arrive2_net
     
     

  • hsstr8

    In the U.S., Spanish is the clear first choice for K-5 most communities (though French might work better in the far Northeast and some Louisiana parishes, Cantonese or Mandarin in various Chinatowns, etc.). As for 6-12 and beyond, when we’re talking about the achievement of full literacy, many other choices emerge–and are made more manageable by virtue of students’ already knowing two languages. (See http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/05/straight for a full-blown pipe dream along these lines.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/condottiero Guillermo Pineda

    The only objective way in which internationalization should be “a goal” for any university is to keep those international students in/near their campuses. Who are these bureaucrats setting the goals for these universities???

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