Financial Aid in Washington's Community and Technical Colleges: Key Program Participation and Outcomes. Research Report 20-2.1

Financial aid is an ever-growing topic of interest to researchers as well as policymakers in understanding the impact and relationship to student success. Aid comes in many forms, from merit-based or need-based scholarships and grants, loans, tuition waivers, and other. Federal and state aid programs alike are typically designed to assist students without the financial means to pay for college out of pocket. Concerns about the rising cost of education and increasing levels of student debt have led to much policy focus around how to increase the amount of grant aid for students and minimize debt after graduation. Washington state in particular has several financial aid programs that are designed to support low-income students' access to college, and in particular, those students with the largest barriers. Washington is poised to serve as a policy leader for need-based aid as part of the solution for education access and contribution to the workforce. With this visibility comes a new level of accountability for the colleges to assess where we are now and set up systems to track the effectiveness of the new investment in meeting the needs of students and our state. The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical patterns of financial aid and establish a baseline of where the community and technical college system stands in current day to aid in this evaluation. This paper seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) What are the most common financial aid categories? How many students receive the different types of aid each year, and what is the average amount awarded?; (2) Have the distributions of aid types changed over time?; (3) What are the demographic breakdowns within the largest federal and Washington-focused financial aid categories of Pell grant, Federal loans, State Need Grant/WA College Grant, Opportunity Grant, and the College Bound Scholarship?; (4) Have demographics within each aid type changed over time?; and (5) What are the completion rates for students within each aid type, four years after they receive aid? What kind of credential do they earn? How many quarters on average does it take to complete? The paper concludes with a summary of key findings as well as next steps for future research, in particular in light of the emerging impact of COVID-19 on the future for Washington students in higher education.