A friend and I had a discussion today regarding the number of college students who are getting federal financial aid. He seems to believe that the percentage is rather small and that most receive money from their parents, scolarships, etc. I believe that the percentage is greater that 50%.
I have found this article which seems to back me up except for the kind of wishy washy terminology: “45 percent of financial aid dollars awarded to undergraduates are in the form of loans, and the rest are grants” but aren’t Pell grants federal aid also, and don’t most students receive both loans and Pell grants making the percentage receiving federal aid higher??
I’m not quite sure where else to look for the information. My Google search argument was the thread title.
Thanks,
Bob
My search turned up this US Department of Education fact sheet which says, “Forty-seven percent of all undergraduates received federal student aid in 2007–08”. It also breaks out Pell grants and Stafford loans.
You have to define your terms better, since “financial aid” includes both grants (which you don’t have to pay back) and loans (which, obviously you or your parents do.)
And by the way, if students are receiving both Pell Grants and Stafford loans, that would actually make the percentage lower not higher, since one student would be counted twice.
A closer reading of that pages says that 79.5 percent of fulltime undergraduates receive some sort of aid, with 52.9 of FT UGs receiving student loans.
You can certainly peruse the numbers and glean whatever data you want from the link I provided; however, the OP specified federal financial aid in his/her post and did not mention fulltime students, so I quoted an answer to that question.
Thank you Implicit for the link and others for the analysis. Yes, I should have specified fulltime.
Bob