Can I Afford It?!
Lee Coffin:
From Hanover, New Hampshire, I'm Lee Coffin, Dartmouth's Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, and this is Admissions Beat.
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I am the son of a service director at a Buick dealership, and a secretary who worked for one year before she had me, and then had four more. And I start there because people always get lost in my title, and focus on the first part of the ampersand. I'm the Dean of Admissions, but I'm also the Dean of Financial Aid. And in the context of that role at Dartmouth, that means I am the champion of financial aid at the senior level of the college to help keep the conversation going forward about how do we offer a really precious resource to families that really need it.
And for so many families, my own included, there is no such thing as admissions without financial aid. That ampersand that connects my title is also the connection for someone's ambition and the possibility of actually enrolling. And at this important moment in October, the free application for federal student aid, aka FAFSA, is now live and running for the high school class of 2026, as well as current undergraduates who must reapply. So it seemed like a really important moment to have the admission beat shift to the financial aid beat, and to remind all of us that college admission has two lanes. You have to apply and you have to get in, and for so many of us, you also have to apply for financial aid and make sure this dream is affordable.
So when we come back, we will meet my colleague, Dino Koff, at Dartmouth, and we will have a conversation with one of the nation's leading advocates for financial aid, Justin Draeger, formerly the CEO and president of the National Association of Financial Aid Administrators. So it's going to be a really interesting conversation, and I hope that helps everybody understand that these two pieces of the LEGO, admissions, and financial aid fit together. We'll be right back.
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So Dino Koff, welcome back to Admissions Beat.
Dino Koff:
Always happy to be here. I think this is number five or six.
Lee Coffin:
You're sort of the recurring guest. And every fall, I bring you in for a lively, plain English conversation about financial aid. For listeners, Dino is the Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of Financial Aid at Dartmouth College, and the father of two kiddos who navigated this process a few years ago, so he was a practitioner as well as a parent. And we're joined this week by Justin Draeger, currently the Senior Vice President at the Strada Foundation for Affordability and Making Post-Secondary Education More Accessible. He was previously, as I mentioned, CEO and President of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, which is a mouthful. So Justin, welcome to Admissions Beat.
Justin Draeger:
Thanks very much for having me, and it's a pleasure to be here. Just a little bit about my background. First, I should say, love the podcast and what you're doing here and the information that you impart. Son also of multiple generations of factory workers in Toledo, Ohio, first glass, and then in auto manufacturing…your father was a Buick dealer. And my father worked in a General Motors plant for multiple decades manufacturing transmissions.
Lee Coffin:
Yep. My dad repaired them, so there we go.
Justin Draeger:
And my mother worked for multiple decades in the local school system there right outside Toledo. I worked for almost two decades for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and I worked with Dino a lot, very helpful and an advocate within the profession representing financial aid offices all across the country. And then today I work for Strada Education Foundation, whose mission is to strengthen the connection between education and work, making sure that people learn after high school what leads to a real career and life success. And we do that by focusing on a lot of areas. One of them is, Lee, as you talked about, affordability. So that's what we do today.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, really important. And Justin, before we start, I like to always invite guests who are making their debut on the mission beat to share their own admission journey. So you just shared that you grew up in Toledo, Ohio. Tell us about Justin as a high school senior and how you got from Toledo to college.
Justin Draeger:
My admissions journey goes back a little bit further because I was very young. I remember the year was 1986. I was in about second or third grade, and I remember being taken up the road about two miles by my father. And in my home, my dad was in the National Guard. So he was in military, but my mom was like the sergeant in our home. And I remember being taken up to a gymnasium at a technical college. And in that gym, my mom at the time was across the gym and my father pointed her out and she was walking across the stage and receiving a certificate in accounting. And I remember it so vividly because my mom was crying as she walked across the stage. And it was not a normal thing to see my mother cry.
Lee Coffin:
The sergeant was crying. Yeah.
Justin Draeger:
That's right. And I remember asking my dad, "What's wrong with mom?" And he's saying that she was just really happy to receive that certificate in accounting. That made a real strong impression to me about the value of education, the promise of education. So even though I was the first in my family to go on and get a four-year degree and a graduate degree, it was instilled in me very early this idea of education and opportunity, and the doors that could open for you in life. So when I was a senior looking at college, I applied to two schools: BYU out in Utah and Ohio State was like my backup.
I didn't have a lot of coaching. My parents didn't have a lot of experience navigating traditional post-secondary ed or college, but I applied to two colleges and I got, thankfully, it was a stretch for me to get into BYU. It's fairly selective and got into both and that was it. I was off to the races at that point.
Lee Coffin:
I get how Ohio State landed on your radar as a son of Ohio. How did BYU get on your radar?
Justin Draeger:
Right. Well, I grew up Mormon.
Lee Coffin:
Oh, okay.
Justin Draeger:
And even though I don't affiliate, that was the Mormon school. So if you grow up in any religion, you probably have a religious school that you've got your eye on. The interesting thing at that time though is everything was hard copy in books, right? So you looked up in the books, like, this is the average GPA. So I did. In my school, the guidance counselors had books that they would just give you. So I would look up and say, "Okay, this is the average GPA." So I kept taking, at that time, it was the ACT, it wasn't the SAT for us, but I took the ACT multiple times until I got to that average score. I took it, like, three or four times and then finally submitted.
Lee Coffin:
Dino, as you worked with Justin for a long time, I'm going to pass the microphone to you to lead this conversation with Justin and me. So I'm going to join Justin as a guest on my own podcast and let you be the emcee for this conversation about affordability. So take it away, Dino Koff.
Dino Koff:
Life is good. All right.
Lee Coffin:
Life is good. We may never survive this one, but…
Dino Koff:
I think I need a signing bonus. Very good. But I'm really happy to be here and spend some time with both of you. But what I want to do is start with Justin and you in the last month gave congressional testimony. Speak about that and how that came about.
Justin Draeger:
So it was in the House Ed and Workforce Committee, and it was a subcommittee of the main committee. the focus of the subcommittee is on, was on that day, post-secondary education, price transparency. And I think the title was like No More Surprises. And the part that we played was, Strada has been doing a series of research projects focused on students and families' perceptions of affordability. So I think there's two parts of this equation when we talk about college affordability. One is, like, how do we as, as schools and policymakers think about, how do we make college more affordable? There's a policy question in there, how do you measure it? How do we fix it? The second is student and family perception. How do they think about it? And that's where we've been focusing a lot of our work.
We focus on both sides of that equation, but how do students and families think about it? Last year, we did a survey of voters. So this way back in 2024 when we had the last presidential election, probably feels like eons ago, but we did it of Harris and Trump voters. What we found was quite a bit of agreement between the two voter groups, as well as independents. 77% of Americans in this representative sample said that college is unaffordable. So most, three out of four, not affordable.
What's interesting though is, we followed up and we asked them a question: how much do you think it costs to go to a two-year public, like a community college? How much do you think it costs to go to a four-year public, like in state? Most people could not, and we gave them multiple choices. Most people could not correctly pull out of that multiple choice, how much it actually cost at the two-year public or four-year public. And most overestimated. So 56% of the people we surveyed thought it cost more than it actually does to go to a in state four-year public institution. Most also overestimated what it costs to go to a community college.
When most Americans believe that higher education costs more than it does and they believe it's unaffordable, that leads to a series of choices that ultimately lead them away or even aspiring to a college education. And I'm not here to say college is for everyone. There are lots of post-secondary education pathways, trades, co-ops, embedded internships, traditional higher ed. Choose the pathway that's right for you. But what we would hate is to segment our population solely based on perceptions of affordability.
And unfortunately, Dino, I don't think colleges are necessarily always helping. Like, it's complicated, and the bulk of my testimony focused on those perceptions and how sometimes we make things hard for students and families.
Lee Coffin:
Justin, I want to just chime in from my seat on the couch with you and just ask, why do you think families overestimate? That's so interesting that they go above what are already pretty high prices.
Justin Draeger:
It comes from a couple different places. What we've learned is that headlines don't help. So every time somebody, a newspaper or a newspaper of record in a state or national headline touts certain schools or have exceeded $100,000 in tuition, that reverberates. And even if families sort of know that, well, geez, that's not most colleges, it still has an impact. It lands. Even though very few people would ever pay that amount, that's a sticker price. That's not the actual price most people would ever pay, but that has an impact. Second, loan indebtedness, headlines about loan debt, and we find that this generation is much more debt-averse than previous generations, even if there are plenty of programs, not all, but plenty of programs that return a positive ROI, that where a moderate or low amount of debt would actually be a great investment, it lands.
And then the third is, and I'm sorry to say this because I am an institutionalist—I believe that by and large, colleges are doing the right thing—colleges don't make this easy. We use jargony language, we sometimes get in our own way. We don't standardize terminology. I think we have some work to do as an industry to make this easier for students and families.
Dino Koff:
Yeah. Lee and I are always talking about affordability. We're always talking about net price what is the price to the specific family. Every family may have a different net price. We need to find out what that net price is for the family, but how do we fix the headlines? Because that seems to stick.
Lee Coffin:
I agree with Justin's point that the sticker price is not what most people pay, but I think just the concept net price when we talk about jargon goes right by everybody. They don't understand what we're talking about. We talk about return on investment or ROI echoes right by them too. And, I think in plain speak, what I get from the admission side is, "I want a degree that gets me a job, period." And that price seems just preposterously high, whether it's net price, discount rate. I mean, all the things we talk about as higher ed people, my dad would be scratching his head saying, "Huh?" So I think that's part of the conundrum too, is just even a place like where we work, Dino, where we have remarkable aid. I mean, we, Justin, we were, Dino and I were in a conversation the other day with a communications firm that we're pondering, hiring, and they ran one of our policies through kind of an AI assessment about how easy was it to understand the policy.
And the policy we have is, if you come from a family that earns $125,000 or less, there's no parent contribution as part of the Dartmouth Financial Aid Award, which seems very straightforward and very powerful. And they came back to us and said, "The way you describe it would require a postgraduate degree to discern this fantastic thing you're promoting." And, you kind of hit yourself in the head and you think, "We're basically free of charge for those families, but they don't understand it because we're pretzel-ing it into something much more complicated."
Justin Draeger:
Yeah. And you're not unique in this. So you have a very generous institutional aid program layered on top of federal student aid and maybe some state aid, although I don't know the state programs very well. But all that to say is you have a very generous aid program that would lower the institutional prices significantly, particularly based on income.
Lee Coffin:
Right. I mean, Dino, you just had this conversation last week with a family.
Dino Koff:
It was striking last week, where I met with a family and they were asking me questions about early decision, and they were thinking it was too risky to do early decision, as it's a binding application process. And I said, "Why is it too risky?" And for a side note, this family made $27,000 and the marketing that we're doing, the conversations we're having, this family is easily not going to have a parent contribution. And they will have a student contribution of $2,450, which is campus employment, where that's four to six hours a week on campus if they want that extra funding. So I say this where getting the point across where... And it is students, it is families, it is this person's college counselor who was saying that "No, you can't do anything early. You're not going to be able to afford this, you can't get out of this."
And that's where when I came back, I kept saying, "We have to have a conversation on affordability in the sense of how do we get this out and better so that families understand this is doable, whether it's the calculators, whether it's conversations and Zooms with us in financial aid, this family has to feel confident at $27,000 in a big city that this is doable."
Lee Coffin:
Because wasn't the mom saying to you, "It's not affordable? Like we can't..."
Dino Koff:
Totally. Everybody was saying that. And I was just like, "You can do this. We can do this together. We've filled out these forms. I am comfortable." And Justin, that goes back to the transparency that you're talking, about where how much is this going to cost? We're trying to say this, but every school tells stories tells this financial story differently. That impacts a lot of schools that are really giving out a lot of aid.
Justin Draeger:
So let me pick up on two things there. One is I do want to highlight that Dartmouth is a part of the College Cost Transparency Initiative.
Lee Coffin:
What is that?
Justin Draeger:
It's a commitment of schools, over 700 schools, that collectively enroll 7 million students that have agreed to standardize terminology and definitions on their financial aid offer notifications. No collusion or anything. This is like just straight, "We all agree to use the same terminology, same definitions when we issue aid offers," so that students and families can actually understand and compare what they're getting. CollegePrice.org is where you can see the schools that have signed up for that.
Lee Coffin:
Just for listeners, can you give a couple of examples of as practical tips of some of the terminology you're talking about?
Justin Draeger:
Yeah, absolutely. So the standards that all these institutions agree to is that when you get a financial aid offer from a school, you will see on that aid offer the total cost of attendance. So all the costs will be there, and they will be broken down by what you will owe the school and the estimated other costs that you might incur while you're attending that institution. You'll see a breakdown of all the financial aid you'll be receiving by grants, and other financial aid like self-help, like campus jobs, or if there are loans included, they will be clearly labeled as loans. And the one term that I would really focus in on that Dino has mentioned multiple times now, net price. That is the underlying cost that you or your family would owe the institution. So that's basically cost minus grants and scholarships, and that's what you owe.
And if every institution used that language, then it would be very easy for a family to say, "This school costs this, this school costs that." And you could sort of ignore everything else because you would be able to see what it'll cost you to attend any institution.
Dino Koff:
Justin, for us it's over 20%, 22%, I think, of our of our first year class is not paying, parents are not paying any, they have a zero parent contribution. We still have roughly 50% on aid and 22% are having no parent contribution. And going back to the transparency of the award offer that you're speaking about, if every school could just say, "Here's what your bill is going to look like in the fall." There's 4,300 accredited schools in the United States. I might be off by one or two, either direction, and only 700 have been approved for this the way they present their award offers.
Justin Draeger:
Yeah, we have a little ways to go because every student and family's probably asking, in terms of affordability, three questions, "Can I afford to attend? Like, what's the bottom line? What do I have to come up with?" It's pretty simple. Two, "Will I be a able to afford to stay?" They just want some assurance that you're doing your best to show up for them. You're committing to them as much as they're committing to you. Can I afford to stay? And then three, our research shows they want to just know, is it going to pay off for me in the end?
Dino Koff:
So Justin, following up on the college cost transparency initiative with the sort of standardizing language and presentation of award offers, if a school that families are looking at is not part of this initiative, is it fair to reach out to a school and say, "Could you fill this template in? Could you present the data so that I can better understand it?"
Justin Draeger:
Whether they'll present the data that way is maybe separate from what the student or family actually wants and needs, which is the net price. Every school should be able to provide the student a net price. Look, Dino, you know that in a financial aid calculation, you basically need three things. You need the cost, you need total grants and scholarships, and that will give you the net price, and that is actually a reportable item at the federal level. Net price is a federally defined term, so this is not some nebulous thing that a school won't know. They can ask for the net price the school should be able to give it to them. The school is required to give the student costs, grants, and scholarships. If you just take those two elements, you will be able to come up with your net price. You could give that back to the school and just say, "Just so I understand, is this my net price?"
And I would just add that my, where I used to work, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, they do publish publicly available in financial aid offer comparison worksheet that is downloadable, students and families can use it, and they can fill in the numbers themselves. Every student probably in high school today is using generative AI in some way. You could probably snap a picture of an aid offer, snap a picture of this aid worksheet and have AI complete some of this, double check the work. That's what I would say. But there's a worksheet publicly available, published by the association that represents financial aid officers to make this a little easier for students and families too.
Dino Koff:
So, thinking about Justin, the transparency that Justin was speaking about, and Lee, you have gone through with a relative, an eye-opening experience as college is looming for a relative. Talk about that.
Lee Coffin:
It's my niece and my sister, who's a single mom, invited my help as she was sorting out my niece's college list. My sister's a teacher at a public high school and worrying behind the scenes about how she's going to pay for her daughter's aspirations, which at the moment are all private liberal arts colleges with a lot of zeros in their cost of attendance, and that's making my sister a little antsy as she ponders that.
And so I sat down with her and I said, "Let's go to these websites, college by college, pull up the net price calculator." And again, that's another term, net price calculator sounds so wonky. But for people outside of higher ed, it's a calculator on the website where you type in your data and it tells you what will this college cost.
I don't have kids. So while I'm a Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, I have not sat down at the kitchen table and plugged in the numbers until a couple of weeks ago, and I was sobered really quickly by two things. One, the federally required net price calculator was an encyclopedia of information that my sister did not have at her fingertips. Lots of questions. She got stuck many times as she filled it out. As I watched her move across the list she had, the result was different every time, and she looked at me and she said, "I don't understand. My data is the same, but these six places are all giving me a different answer."
And I said, "Because each of them have a different set of policies and they're taking the information you're providing." And in her case, home equity was a big wild card. So with a couple of them that was being discounted and a couple, it was counting 100%. And she was like, "I'm not going to refinance my house at the age of 58 as a public school teacher." I'm like, "I know, but that's what the formula is assuming." And there was one of the places, I won't name any of them, but there was one of the places that had less of an endowment than the others, and her need kind of hit her between the eyeballs. She said, "This is the safety school, and it's asking me for the most parent contribution." I said, "Yep, they're going to want your daughter, but they're not going to pay for her."
Versus the place that's the hardest to get into was going to be the most generous. So it was just really, Dino and Justin, kind of eye-opening to me to watch this one parent from a very middle-class background wrestle with this question. And I was pushing her in September to do what she was doing because I said, "If you like the numbers that this calculator is producing, you need to revise this list pretty quickly. Because if you can't afford it, then this needs to be a very different list." And I said, "So looking at some of the numbers, is this within your checkbook's feasibility?" And she said, "I think so. " I said, "So you should be comfortable now that if she applies to these two or three and gets in, it's workable, but we probably need to add a couple more options for you that are going to be a little less of a climb for you to be able to pay for it.
So Dino, I came back to my desk at Dartmouth and thought, hmm, this is a really eye-opening, firsthand experience for me as somebody who's been a dean of admission and financial aid for a really long time. Justin, as you hear that, do you shake your head and say, "Oh," or is this, like, what most families are going through?
Justin Draeger:
Well, unfortunately, I don't actually think it's what most families go through. I think it's the right way to actually go through it.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, that's good.
Justin Draeger:
I think that most families don't actually have the affordability conversation. And I think that's a mistake. And I think it's because it's riddled with feelings of shame. Families feel as though that they should have been doing something and they didn't show up in the right way for their kids. It's been so embedded that this is the pathway forward in America, and then they don't know how to tell their kids, like, "I'm balancing healthcare costs, retirement expectations, saving for your college, buying and saving for a home, vehicles." There are realities and pressures that families are under, and then to have to tell your kid that, "I don't know if we can afford your "dream" school."
I think those are really tough conversations that most parents try to put off for as long as possible, and then for too many the parents are willing to take on unsustainable levels of debt that then squeeze them even further. So I actually think, Lee, you've done your sister a huge favor by talking about this one really important component of institutional fit upfront. So I think kudos to you because-
Lee Coffin:
Well, thank you.
Justin Draeger:
I think it's important.
Dino Koff:
These conversations, we're talking about does a school have academic fit? Does the school have a social setting they want? We need to have the affordability conversation at that time when we're looking at those schools, figuring out after award letters come out and people have been admitted and award offers come out, there are surprises at that point, and there's a lot of heartbreak. And I feel like there are tools out there, and being able to have a conversation saying, "This might be an academic reach school, this is definitely a financial reach school also." And I think those conversations, if they happen earlier with families, can make it a less stress... Well, it may be stressful, but more under understanding process.
Lee Coffin:
So Dina, let's use that comment and jump to FAFSA. FAFSA and the calculator, one feeds off the other, but my sister was really surprised by what the calculator was asking her to input. And I said, "Some of this is going to go into your FAFSA." So Justin and Dino, for the families that have never opened up the free application for federal student aid or a calculator, what are the inputs? What's the information that a family needs to start to gather either to make the calculator work effectively? Because I've had a lot of families over the years say, "I typed stuff into the calculator and it said X and you're offering me X minus a lot." And I said, "Well, because you probably input the information incorrectly," but what are the variables and then some tips about completing FAFSA because like, like so many federal forms, it's improved, but it's still a federal form.
Dino Koff:
Everybody, we are in middle of October recording this podcast, and it is very exciting that families are getting onto the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. They are being able to submit it that the simplification that was dreamed about three or four years ago has finally... It seems like we are heading into a path where at different workshops that we've been in, families who are able to get their FSA IDs, their federal student aid IDs and being able to sign on, for many families, it has been a very much simpler process compared to if you were listening to last year's podcast or two years ago if you were filling out, trying to fill out a FAFSA that was in available after January. So for families, there's not a lot of filling in buttons anymore, Lee, which has been easier. There's still some challenges for some families being able to get set up, get into the document. But for the most part, we've gotten to a point where the dream of a FASFA simplification has come true.
Lee Coffin:
So the form works, that's the easy way of saying what Dino just said, the form now works where it didn't for a few years. I'm a dad sitting there, first kid going to college, I have to start to input this. I'm assuming you're going to ask my income, I'm assuming you're going to ask me what I've saved over time generally and for college. Maybe you're going to ask me about my family dynamic. I don't know. What are the criteria someone's going to use to determine how much I can pay?
Justin Draeger:
There are a couple different places, depending on where you are on your admissions journey. So if you're very early in the admissions journey, like say you're 8th, 9th, 10th grade, and I'm talking about financial fit now, just focusing in on that. I would say start with the college scorecard, which will at least give you a breakdown by income on average prices. It's not going to tell you what you will pay, but it'll give you some general breakdowns.
Lee Coffin:
Tell us where that is. What's College Scorecard? I've never heard of that.
Justin Draeger:
Yeah. So if you go to the Department of Education's website, you'll find the college scorecard. Google it, just type in college scorecard. It'll take you right to the Department of Ed's website. And you can type in any college and it'll take you to a scorecard where it provides an income bracket breakdown of net prices. It's not going to tell you what you will pay. It'll give you some averages. I wouldn't take it as the truth. It'll give you some wide ranges. Every institution is required also to have a net price calculator, but Lee, as you pointed out earlier, how much a school has invested in their net price calculator can vary.
I suspect... Well, I don't have to suspect, I've actually looked at Dartmouth. It's very good. And I know you're also rolling out an early estimator, which you, students and families can use with three data elements and get a pretty accurate estimate of what they'll pay at Dartmouth. So kudos to you. 20 some institutions will be using that tool, this early net price estimator. Others might have more detail. This is like how you find out how much institutional aid that you'll be getting on top of your federal aid. You might be required to provide more financial information. So it might take you a little time to get through it, but just be warned that every institution's net price calculator might differ for underlying reasons, like schools have different definitions of need and how much they've actually invested in their net price calculator.
The final, "I am really applying, let's do this," is the FAFSA. That's where you apply, and hopefully you're getting an aid offer back. So if I were thinking about this as a journey, I would start early with college scorecard, net price calculator, and at the latter, when I'm actually getting into the admissions process at an institution, that's when you use the FAFSA.
Dino Koff:
Justin, I think that is really good step-by-step. And many schools a couple of years ago, when the FAFSA was being simplified put in laws that people to graduate high school had to fill out the FAFSA. A lot of states took away that law because they weren't students weren't allowed or families weren't able to fill it out in time. But if we could add in the college scorecard and calculators with the FAFSA in 10th grade, so everybody could see this is how much this community college would cost. This is how much a trades program would cost that's receiving Title IV federal money, so they would have to have it. At least as in 10th grade or 9th grade, it is out there. And to see, is this attainable?
Lee Coffin:
So Dino, Justin, if you're... Let's use my sister again. What documents should she gather before she starts that? Her tax return?
Dino Koff:
So I think having documents available…FAFSA should have some linkage with the IRS. So you may not be manually typing in anymore, but having everything in front of you tax returns, bank statements, even retirement, and not that retirement assets are used in in the financial aid formulas, but just having it there to make sure you're not counting it as an investment. So a lot of different calculators may break that out. Taxes, bank accounts, investment values, maybe a home value if you're doing as a CSS profiled form that's a little bit more in depth than the FAFSA and you should be good to go to filling this out.
And the last thing I'll add about this is schools are ready to help. Feel free to reach out to a school. We're constantly on Zooms with families filling out different forms or we're in person. Every school is different with what they're asking. So we know schools are asking for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Many schools with need-based aid are using a form called the CSS Profile, which is a form that goes just a little bit more in depth than the FAFSA. And it will take a half hour and you will want your taxes in front of you because the information isn't linked, you're manually typing that in. And you submit that to the schools that are requesting it directly.
Lee Coffin:
And to listeners, when Dina says CSS, as in Charlie, Sam, Sam, that is the college scholarship service, and it falls under the umbrella of the college board that administers the SAT among many other things. This has been such a treasure chest of info. Before we wrap, I want to lean into Justin's current role.
At Strada, you are the senior vice president for affordability, which is a delicious title. So let's ponder that one. So what tips do you have for families about affordability, whether the family has a senior in high school chugging towards the big moment this year, or juniors just starting to pop up like Bambi, taking those first steps. Or maybe even middle schoolers, still got a few more years to go. What's your guidance, Justin, about how to move forward with confidence?
Justin Draeger:
Yeah. I love that question. Most of my work is focused on scalable systemic change and how we make college more affordable for students and families across the country. But turning this slightly sideways on how students and families can approach this, I lead with some advice that is practical and it's just advice. It's not going to be universally applicable. I'm not a financial advisor and I'm certainly not your financial advisor, which is what I would say to everybody who would be listening to this.
But I do have two kids in college myself. I'm a first generation college grad, and so is my wife, by the way, and we're both first generation graduate degree recipients. And this is how we approached it with our kids and the two that are in college. One, I would say ideally start early, like around when they get into high school, because this does inform the high school curriculum choices they'll make. And that includes trades. It includes whether they're going to do a traditional college. They don't have to have it all figured out, but direction is important.
Two, have a total budget in mind for whatever the program is that they're oriented towards. And what is, we mentioned parental contribution, how much can a parent pay in total, not per year, but across the full program? That's a maybe a tall order, but it's important. And that would include savings, income, and loans. And I think the best advice I would give is it has to be realistic, and as much as every parent loves their child, my advice would be it has to be realistic. And I personally have told my children, "I love you, but the best gift I can give you is taking care of myself in retirement." So that's what will come first and that's real.
So that's the best gift I've given my children. And that means there is a cap on what I will provide each of them for post-secondary ed. So that's one, what's the parent contribution I'm willing to give each of my three children? Second is, what is the student contribution? So I'm a big believer in student skin in the game. Which means that my kids, even though their high school counselors told them that they should apply to eight or nine schools, my kids could only apply to that number if they came up with some of the money to apply to that number of schools. Now, I know low-income folks can find offsets for that, and that is fantastic. Some schools waive fees for kids in certain income brackets. That was not our family. We've been blessed in that way, but I was not paying for nine application fees. So I'm a big believer in everything that there's a true cost share, and that included for my own kids.
Even for their own educations, they have to come up with something, even if it's a little bit, because when you're spending other people's money there's a different calculus happening. So my kids do not come from a low-income family, and what could they reasonably contribute through summer work or campus work? So each of my kids have jobs on campus. So that was important to us. "Here's what we'll pay, and you're also going to contribute."
And then finally, what's the gap planning? If there is a reach, financially speaking— I'm only speaking about the financial fit here—if there's a reach, what's the plan? It's not something we can ignore and we'll quote unquote figure it out. Like, what is the real plan between us and the student? Is it, we're going to put in the work for other scholarships? Is it, you're going to work more hours? Are you taking a gap year to earn money? We have a plan in place. I think these are all reasonable. As much as I love my children, there was a limit to what we as a family would pay. And then my final point is what we talked about at the very beginning. Don't assume colleges are outside your reach until you've done the work to figure out how much they'll actually cost for you. Most people overestimate what a school will cost.
So once you go through the cost estimators and actually apply, then you'll find out, and then you'll make your financial fit decision based on that. And a school like Dartmouth may well be within your financial reach once you've actually gone through the process.
Lee Coffin:
That surprises so many people though when they see a place like Dartmouth costing what we do, and then they realize, "Wow, I'm paying a fraction of that." That's usually an "aha." But Justin, as I was listening to your advice. I thought, while you're pairing romance with pragmatism, like you're saying, it's okay to have this rosy, kind of romantic idea around college. But you're also saying you have to own part of the cost over the years, loans are such a four letter word in so many student minds. And I always look at my own education and think, I had loans for undergrad and for grad school, and I've always wrapped my arms around the idea that this is a mortgage I'm taking on myself. And so I always say that because people understand a mortgage. You borrow money to have a house, you borrow money often when you buy a car.
And I would say your education is as important as a house, maybe more so. So the idea that you're leaning in, assessing how do I finance this in some way when I have to without getting hives about the idea that you've borrowed money to do that. It's part of this infrastructure, but I really appreciate the advice you're giving families about how to approach this. Ideally, sooner than later for some families, and again, watching my sister do, it's kind of a real time, the book is unfolding week by week. And I think a lot of parents haven't really sat down with the calculator in an honest, intentional way until senior high school gets going and you're starting to see how the numbers run or not.
Justin Draeger:
I think they're hard conversations to have, but I think that you'll be thankful for them in the end. And schools will do their part, I hope, by law, if not by leading the way. The ROI conversation is real. What can I expect to earn? That can help smooth over some of the loan conversations. But Lee, you all are doing a lot of good work at Dartmouth and leading the way. And I think there's a lot we can learn from the way you're approaching affordability and transparency work.
Lee Coffin:
Well, I appreciate that. And I feel blessed, as I know Dino does, to work at an institution that has the resource we have. And I've worked at other places that don't, and so I know how far some places must make those pennies stretch. So that's something for families to also consider as you're looking, is the resource of the institution often connects to their ability to offer you the resource to attend. That's also a less romantic way of thinking about this. Justin, as a dean of admission, thank you for the work you do on behalf of the students of the country. As they think about higher ed, it's really important. I think you are a really charming and insightful advocate for this topic. And I really appreciate both your day job, but also the fact that you came on admission beat with Dino and me to talk about it.
Justin Draeger:
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Lee Coffin:
Yeah, of course. And Dino, as always, I'm taking back the mic, but thank you for co-hosting this one with me.
Dino Koff:
Life is good. There's game plans for people, which is great.
Lee Coffin:
So next week we'll be back with another episode of Admission Beat. Look forward to Admission Beat Quiz Bowl, our first game show edition of the pod. But for now, this is Lee Coffin from Dartmouth College. Thank you for listening.