School Counselors - Financial Aid

High School Counselors - consider this a challenge!!

American Student Assistance this month published a report, “School Counselors & College Financial Fit,” which outlines findings from a nationwide survey of high school counselors regarding their “capacity to advise students about financial considerations for education options after graduation.”

Key findings include:

• Survey results confirmed that school counselors understand and accept their role in advising students on college financing as part of a college planning process but often don’t have the training or support to do so.

• Eighty-eight percent agree that financing college is a major concern for their students, and 92 percent say they bear some of the responsibility to discuss college affordability with their students but also believe that family members, college financial aid offices, and teachers play a role.

• Only 55 percent of counselors had formal training on the financial aid process and of this group, the majority received this training at a conference or on the job. Of that 55 percent, only 26 percent received training in their bachelor’s or master’s degree level counseling program.

• Only 11 percent of counselors say they are always aware of their students’ financial circumstances when having discussions about college affordability. Another 52 percent say they are often aware of their students’ financial circumstances.

• Less than 20 percent of counselors say they are extremely comfortable discussing the financial aid application process with students and parents, while over twice that (48 percent) say they are extremely comfortable talking about the college application process.

• Counselors believe academic fit is a more crucial consideration than financial fit when discussing college options with students and are more likely to dissuade a student from attending a school that is a poor academic fit than one that’s a poor financial fit. Counselors also have a slight bias toward recommending four-year colleges over two-year colleges.

• School counselors don’t have a true understanding of how much debt students are taking on to fund their education. Only 17 percent of respondents could accurately pick the average amount of student debt students are accumulating.

• When reflecting on their own experiences applying to college, 66 percent said they had to take on student loans to pay for their own education, and 70 percent of respondents said that their own high school counselors were not able to guide them through the process of financing college because they weren’t knowledgeable about the topic of financial aid.

• Counselors do not have the ability to talk in-depth with all students about planning for college because high student-to-counselor ratios limit time spent with each student. Over half (54 percent) of the counselors in the study have a ratio of more than 300 students to one counselor at their schools