Report Details How to Use Negative Expected Family Contribution to Support Students With Unmet Need – NASFAA
Many in the financial aid profession and broader higher education community agree the expected family contribution (EFC) figure presented to prospective students once they complete the FAFSA is a confusing and at times inaccurate representation of what an individual’s family should contribute to pay for college. Luckily, changes are coming that could better help aid offices serve the neediest students.
While the term is set to be retired in the coming years as part of a FAFSA overhaul and replaced by a Student Aid Index (SAI) that incorporates a negative $1,500 floor, a new study from the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice released Wednesday aims to show how presenting students with a negative EFC — and eventually negative SAI — will help students better understand their true out-of-pocket costs to pay for college.
To conduct the study, the Hope Center partnered with six institutions located in Texas — four community colleges and two regional public universities — to compute the negative EFCs for all their financial aid applicants in the 2018-19 academic year. At four of the six institutions, more than 70% of financial aid applicants had a negative EFC.