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“Undocumented Students Struggle to Afford College.” 

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“Undocumented Students Struggle to Afford College.” 

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When Miguel Pimentel Davila was a first-year student at California State University East Bay, his average day went a little something like this:

He woke up at 7 a.m., went to class at 8 a.m. and left campus at 4 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., he started his restaurant shift as a janitor and dishwasher. When he got home at midnight, he studied until 2 a.m. before going to bed at 2:30. The next morning, he'd get up and do it all over again.

"It was really, really challenging my first year," says Pimental Davila. "I didn't have enough time to study and do my homework."

Pimentel Davila couldn't sustain the routine. His GPA dipped to 1.9, putting him on academic probation. His parents told him to quit his job, and each took on two jobs themselves. During his last year of school, he used a patchwork of scholarships to pay off his tuition.

For undocumented students, Pimentel Davila's story isn't uncommon. Undocumented students - including those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status - can't receive federal financial aid because they are not U.S. citizens. So, they have to scrape together the funds for college themselves.

This puts them at a distinct disadvantage. Over half of all undergraduates - 55 percent - receive some form of federal financial aid to pay for college, according to the latest National Postsecondary Aid study.

And it's easy to see why. On average, undergraduates pay $17,237 a year for tuition, room and board at public institutions and $44,551 a year at private nonprofits, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

That's a lot of money for any low-income student. And undocumented students are paying these sums without a key resource where their classmates turn for help.

This isn't an insignificant student population, either. A 2019 report found that nearly 100,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Meanwhile, DACA provides temporary legal status for more than 669,000 undocumented immigrants brought into the U.S. as children, according to 2019 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

Some states and their higher education institutions have been trying to bridge the financial gap, making in-state tuition and benefits more accessible to undocumented students. Right now, undocumented students are eligible for in-state tuition in 17 states. Six states allow undocumented students to apply for state financial aid.

Other states are getting creative. For example, in August, the Arizona Board of Regents decided to offer a "non-resident tuition rate" to undocumented Arizona high school graduates, a price between out-of-state and in-state tuition.

Schools, meanwhile, are making their own strides. For example, the University of Virginia will offer need-based financial aid for in-state DACA students for the first time this academic year.

The University of Michigan just changed its in-state tuition standards for fall 2020 to make it easier for DACA students to qualify. Before, students who proved their residency status had to enroll within 28 months for in-state tuition. Now, undocumented students have 40 months to scare up the money for college.

Efforts like this "help a lot," says Sergio Rodriguez-Lopez, a DACA recipient and undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "I don't think I would've been able to go there if it was out-of-state costs."

Rodriguez-Lopez is taking a year off to work because his scholarship money alone won't be enough to afford his senior year of college. This is the second time he's had to delay school to save up. After his high school graduation, he spent a year working two retail jobs.

"It was a lot of moving, bending, lifting heavy stuff," he says.

"It was intense, that's all I gotta say - back-to-back, two fulltime jobs. Sometimes I didn't sleep. Sometimes I went days just feeling awful. But I had to do it."

The combination of scholarship funds from his school and in-state tuition at least helped him "finish a few years there before running out of funds," Rodriguez-Lopez says. He's optimistic about returning to school next fall.

"I've already done this before," he says. "It worked out for me, and it should work out again."

In contrast, DACA recipient Esti Arroyo Nolasco thinks in-state tuition didn't help her much. The cost of college is "outrageous" for in-state U.S. citizens, let alone for undocumented students, she says.

Arroyo Nolasco graduated from DePaul University in 2017. She grew up in a mostly White, middle-class Chicago suburb where her peers took attending a four-year university for granted.

"Everyone was getting ready to go to college," she says. "All of my friends were going to go to college. My senior year, I had the realization that wasn't going to be the case for me."

Arroyo Nolasco started off at her local community college. At one point, her mom was working three jobs and her dad had two. She also worked to help her parents with costs.

"I took my job very seriously," she says. "I took my education very seriously. Because I knew the sacrifices I needed to undergo, as well as my parents."

While in-state tuition helped Arroyo Nolasco, she "didn't have enough resources or access to information about how to pay for college or in-state tuition," she wrote in a Facebook post.

She started school in 2012, the first year of the DACA program.

Today, many undocumented students still don't know the tuition options available to them, says Dr. Marisol Clark-Ibáñez, faculty director of the National Latino Research Center.

As a sociologist at California State University, San Marcos, she interviews undocumented high school students as part of the UndocuResearch Project. Her team has been "very shocked" by the "lack of information," she says.

"We feel like our institutions are really out there trying to spread the word," she says. "But the word is not getting to the students - or through the schools to the students."

Aside from in-state tuition, undocumented students have other resources available to them such as private scholarships.

Still, their choices are limited, says Gabriel Hernandez Acosta. He was undocumented when he applied to college and later received DACA status.

He helped his parents finance his undergraduate education at Mount Mercy University through academic awards from his school. When he looked for outside scholarships, many listed U.S. citizenship as a requirement or asked for his Social Security number. He didn't have DACA yet, so he wasn't eligible.

"I didn't have any of that stuff at that time," Acosta says. "For me, it was a fear of, if I get in, are they going to release my information to the government or immigration? It was really scary to apply to a lot of the scholarship opportunities. I wasn't able to apply to the majority of them."

Now, Acosta is an admissions counselor at Mount Mercy and works with students like him, among others. He helps them think through what they can afford and how.

"I wanted to help students going through the same thing I was going through," he says. "Now, seeing a lot of my students going to Mount Mercy, going through the whole process, getting an education, it really makes me smile a lot more and makes my heart happy knowing I helped someone."

Clark-Ibáñez says the fight for college affordability for undocumented students needs to start in high school.

She emphasized that parents are an important part of the financial equation, and high schools fail to take them into account. In her research with high school students and teachers, she often finds that even "super ally" educators and counselors, who regularly talk with undocumented students about their college options, often have no contact with students' families.

To help undocumented students, high schools need to make parents a part of the conversation, she says.

"The decision to go to college is not an individual decision," Clark-Ibáñez says. "It's a family decision that affects family economy, sibling care, maybe elder care. For students, parents are their roots and their wings."

Clark-Ibáñez also thinks it's important for both high schools and colleges to have at least a "point person," a staff member knowledgeable about undocumented students' financial options.

Some students suggest that colleges and universities offer more scholarships or long-term payment plans to spread out the costs over time.

But more than anything, students expressed that they want to be visible - that they want their schools to not just offer advising on college affordability for undocumented students, but to do it outwardly and proudly.

"A piece of paper does not define a person," says Rodriguez-Lopez. "A person defines their future and defines who they are and what they're going to do in this world. Schools should be more sensitive to that. Just because we're undocumented doesn't mean we don't have dreams. We want to inspire people, we want to push the boundaries like anyone else, we want the opportunity to change the world."

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Undocumented Students Struggle to Afford College

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When Miguel Pimentel Davila was a first-year student at California State University East Bay, his average day went a little something like this: He woke up at 7 a.m., went to class at 8 a.m. and le­ft campus at 4 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., he started his restaurant shi­ft as a janitor and dishwasher.

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Social Experiences and Academic Outcomes

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Social Experiences and Academic Outcomes

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aNZGyATcwBiljWmpfubaPca9EnBMiw75/view?usp=sharing

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Report Finds Growth in Undocumented Student Population

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Report Finds Growth in Undocumented Student Population

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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/17/report-estimates-more-450000-undocumented-immigrants-are-enrolled-higher-ed

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“Undocumented Students Deserve Greater Access to Higher Education.” 

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“Undocumented Students Deserve Greater Access to Higher Education.” 

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Higher education is central to achieving individual economic success and to supporting the national economy. It not only offers the most dependable path to achieving social mobility, but it also allows the United States to remain competitive in the global economy. For the thousands of undocumented young people who graduate from American high schools each year, the path to a college degree or a postsecondary credential is overshadowed by the complex state, federal, and institutional policies that determine available education options. Approximately 80,000 undocumented youth who have lived in the country for at least five years turn 18 every year, and about 65,000 of them cross the stage to graduate high school. These undocumented students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and many states do not allow them to pay in-state tuition rates.

Undocumented students are advocating for greater access to affordable and high-quality higher education, and students, families, and policymakers across the country are demanding the same. In this context, President Barack Obama announced his America's College Promise plan to provide free community college to all who are willing to work for it. "We don't expect anybody to be bound by the circumstances of their birth," President Obama said in his speech outlining the plan. "And the way we deliver on that is making sure that our education system works on behalf of every person who lives here." His announcement made clear that free education is important for everyone living within the nation's borders, leaving open the possibility that his plan applies to undocumented students.

In the weeks following the president's announcement-and further acknowledgement in his State of the Union address-the Center for American Progress announced the beginning stages of its College for All proposal. The plan, which is still in development, builds on some of the same themes as the president's plan-including the assertion that everyone, regardless of income, should have access to postsecondary education. However, its focus looks beyond community colleges to ensure that every student attending a public two- or four-year university does not have to pay upfront for tuition and fees at the time of enrollment. The plan also reforms the way students apply for financial aid and, in the case of student loans, streamlines services through the tax system in order to reform loan repayment. College for All would provide families with an early guarantee of aid and allow them to repay loans through payroll withholding, while offering more generous aid and repayment terms than those of the current system. While details are still forthcoming, CAP believes that the central tenets of College for All should apply to all students without restriction, including undocumented students who have grown up in the United States.

Undocumented students face complex barriers to higher education

Many undocumented students who have grown up in the United States often are not aware of their immigration status until they apply to college. While their friends learn that they are eligible for grants or loans, undocumented students learn that they cannot access federal financial aid and that their state may not offer them in-state tuition. Indeed, some schools welcome undocumented students, while others do not. And with high schools lacking college guidance counselors-many public high schools have an estimated ratio of 1 counselor for every 500 students-many counselors may not have the knowledge or time necessary to help undocumented students. Furthermore, these students experience poverty at twice the rate of students with U.S.-born parents, making it unlikely that their families have saved money for their college education. It is also unlikely that they can afford the high and ever-increasing cost of tuition, especially without access to in-state tuition rates and federal grants and loans.

While available data on undocumented students and higher-education attainment are limited, it is clear that undocumented students have significantly greater trouble pursuing higher education than their U.S.-born counterparts. Undocumented students are significantly less likely to finish high school: 40 percent of 18- to 24-year-old undocumented students do not graduate, compared with 8 percent of all students nationwide. Given cost constraints, a majority of undocumented students who do complete high school attend lower-cost community colleges, which often have lower completion rates than four-year public colleges, lowering students' chances of completing. Financial stresses also contribute to lower bachelor's degree completion and extended completion times.

An investment in College for All is an investment in our future

Since the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe, the United States has been legally required to finance the education of all students in grades K-12, regardless of their immigration status. This is not the case in higher education, although some states provide more support than others. Currently, 20 states offer in-state tuition rates to undocumented students through state legislation or actions by state university systems, and many other states have proposed similar legislation. Four states also allow undocumented students to access state-sponsored education grants or financial aid. But nine states have restrictions on tuition equity. Restricting access to higher education wastes students' talent and potential.

As gains made in the postsecondary attainmen t of competitor countries outpace gains made in the United States, America needs to do more to increase its college-going and high school graduation rates. The nation can accomplish this by prioritizing the attainment of populations that have the greatest room for growth. College for All should apply to all students. This would allow undocumented students in citizenship limbo to have access to public higher-education institutions and federal grants and loans. Under College for All, undocumented students could be eligible for accessible, affordable postsecondary education, but further congressional action needs to be taken. This would increase attainment rates, giving undocumented students the ability to succeed and to become the social and economic participants the United States needs to guarantee a prosperous future.
Antoinette Flores is a Policy Analyst on the Postsecondary Education team at the Center for American Progress.

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Undocumented Students Deserve Greater Access to Higher Education - Center for American Progress

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Higher education is central to achieving individual economic success and to supporting the national economy. It not only offers the most dependable path to achieving social mobility, but it also allows the United States to remain competitive in the global economy.

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https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:840b4398-7d10-4b6d-bce9-f2f0cc3ab5d0