Financial aid packages overlook living costs that still exclude low-income students

Evidence

Even a student with a generous financial aid package can lack money for textbooks, housing, and food. Anthony Abraham Jack, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of The Privileged Poor, successfully petitioned Harvard to keep its dining halls open during spring break after a low-income student told him that the closed dining halls meant “famine” to students like her. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 270

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates how the gap between sticker price and full cost of attendance is not captured by tuition figures alone.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the hidden non-tuition costs of higher education (housing across breaks, textbooks) as a structural filter that operates within ‘race-neutral’ need-based aid.