Among the various barriers to college student enrollment and degree completion, finances stand out as the most prominent. This is what CampusLogic’s four-day SHIFT Summit is striving to address.
“There’s too many students abandoning their degree. Why is that?” asked CampusLogic CEO Gregg Scoresby, who added that new research over the last six months holds the answer to this question. “We’ve been trying to fix academic issues, and again that’s important. But it’s also the number three reason that students don’t enroll. … The number one reason is financial, so the number one reason students don’t enroll is financial and the number one reason students don’t graduate is financial.”
The virtual SHIFT meeting is taking place this week, featuring speakers including college presidents, organization officials, anti-poverty advocate, author and Maryland gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore.
“So I think the SHIFT Summit is designed to elevate or raise awareness about what we think is a much bigger obstacle to student success than most people give credit for, and that’s the financial frustration that most students go through,” said Carlo Salerno, CampusLogic’s vice president of research. “It’s difficult to focus on learning when you’re constantly struggling to figure out how to pay for this thing, when you face a lot of bureaucratic red tape, when there’s a long, windy process, when there’s lots of ambiguity, there’s lot of particular jargon. All of those things work against first-gen students, they work against any student who has to figure out how to budget for and plan for arguably which is one of the largest investments they’re ever going to make.”
CampusLogic CMO Darren Steele compared higher ed’s financial aid processes to the long, tedious process of renting a movie from the now defunct Blockbuster, as opposed to the easy access of streaming services.
“In the era of Netflix, we ask students of Gen Z to go back to Blockbuster every time they go through the financial aid process,” said Steele. “It doesn’t have to be this way. And this is the main reason why students are not getting degrees.”
According to Steele, 33% of high school students who don’t go to college opt out because they believe they can’t afford it, while 73% of college non-completers say that the financial aid process affected their academic performance.
