Washington State Makes a Bold Move for Low-Income Students and College

 In what I consider fabulous news, the Times had this article, 

Washington to guarantee college tuition for low-income families 

The FAFSA has long been a sticking point for students, with billions of dollars in federal aid going unclaimed because they simply give up on it, or don’t complete it correctly. An overhaul last year meant to simplify the process only made things worse, with technical problems that led to even lower completion rates and contributed to a decline of 7 percentage points in the proportion of high school seniors going directly to college, according to the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN. 

 

The problems with the FAFSA have serious implications for college attendance: High school seniors who complete the form are 84% more likely to enroll in college immediately than those who don’t, while the figure increases to 127% among the lowest-income students, NCAN says.

So....

To try to reverse enrollment declines, Washington in 2026 will start automatically guaranteeing effectively free tuition at public colleges and universities to students from low-income families that receive food benefits from the federal supplemental nutrition assistance program, or SNAP. Students will find out as early as 10th grade whether they qualify, which is meant to get families thinking about college earlier.

The state will still encourage students to apply for federal aid, but the new law will at least remove barriers for state scholarships, said Michael Meotti, executive director of the Washington Student Achievement Council, the state agency that will manage the program. Many of these students already qualify for state aid, Meotti said, but don’t find out until later in the college application path, if they apply at all.

What are the challenges? They revolve around student data privacy.

There is, however, at least one major challenge to using SNAP or other federal benefits to determine eligibility: Federal agencies are often reluctant or unable to share personal data about who qualifies, as the state of Washington has discovered. 

“We are working through a little bit of reluctance: ‘This is our data, not your data,’ ” Meotti said. But several states have used SNAP to determine eligibility for other public benefit programs, he noted. “We know this isn’t forbidden.”

“We picked SNAP for a reason,” Meotti said. “SNAP has the deepest reach among low-income households in this state and probably every state in the nation.”