does homework improve academic achievement if so how much is best

Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

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Educators should be thrilled by these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework and having equal numbers of dissenters shouting "too much!" and "too little!" is about as good as they can hope for.

But opinions cannot tell us whether homework works; only research can, which is why my colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysis of dozens of homework studies to examine whether homework is beneficial and what amount of homework is appropriate for our children.

The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount of homework to achievement, but control for lots of other factors that might influence this connection. These types of studies, often based on national samples of students, also find a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies simply correlate homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.

Why might that be? Younger children have less developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home. Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling in school take more time to complete homework assignments simply because these assignments are more difficult for them.

These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis. Practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what's going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Opponents of homework counter that it can also have negative effects. They argue it can lead to boredom with schoolwork, since all activities remain interesting only for so long. Homework can deny students access to leisure activities that also teach important life skills. Parents can get too involved in homework -- pressuring their child and confusing him by using different instructional techniques than the teacher.

My feeling is that homework policies should prescribe amounts of homework consistent with the research evidence, but which also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students and families. In general, teachers should avoid either extreme.

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Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

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Why homework doesn't seem to boost learning--and how it could.

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Some schools are eliminating homework, citing research showing it doesn’t do much to boost achievement. But maybe teachers just need to assign a different kind of homework.

In 2016, a second-grade teacher in Texas delighted her students—and at least some of their parents—by announcing she would no longer assign homework. “Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance,” she explained.

The following year, the superintendent of a Florida school district serving 42,000 students eliminated homework for all elementary students and replaced it with twenty minutes of nightly reading, saying she was basing her decision on “solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students.”

Many other elementary schools seem to have quietly adopted similar policies. Critics have objected that even if homework doesn’t increase grades or test scores, it has other benefits, like fostering good study habits and providing parents with a window into what kids are doing in school.

Those arguments have merit, but why doesn’t homework boost academic achievement? The research cited by educators just doesn’t seem to make sense. If a child wants to learn to play the violin, it’s obvious she needs to practice at home between lessons (at least, it’s obvious to an adult). And psychologists have identified a range of strategies that help students learn, many of which seem ideally suited for homework assignments.

For example, there’s something called “ retrieval practice ,” which means trying to recall information you’ve already learned. The optimal time to engage in retrieval practice is not immediately after you’ve acquired information but after you’ve forgotten it a bit—like, perhaps, after school. A homework assignment could require students to answer questions about what was covered in class that day without consulting their notes. Research has found that retrieval practice and similar learning strategies are far more powerful than simply rereading or reviewing material.

One possible explanation for the general lack of a boost from homework is that few teachers know about this research. And most have gotten little training in how and why to assign homework. These are things that schools of education and teacher-prep programs typically don’t teach . So it’s quite possible that much of the homework teachers assign just isn’t particularly effective for many students.

Even if teachers do manage to assign effective homework, it may not show up on the measures of achievement used by researchers—for example, standardized reading test scores. Those tests are designed to measure general reading comprehension skills, not to assess how much students have learned in specific classes. Good homework assignments might have helped a student learn a lot about, say, Ancient Egypt. But if the reading passages on a test cover topics like life in the Arctic or the habits of the dormouse, that student’s test score may well not reflect what she’s learned.

The research relied on by those who oppose homework has actually found it has a modest positive effect at the middle and high school levels—just not in elementary school. But for the most part, the studies haven’t looked at whether it matters what kind of homework is assigned or whether there are different effects for different demographic student groups. Focusing on those distinctions could be illuminating.

A study that looked specifically at math homework , for example, found it boosted achievement more in elementary school than in middle school—just the opposite of the findings on homework in general. And while one study found that parental help with homework generally doesn’t boost students’ achievement—and can even have a negative effect— another concluded that economically disadvantaged students whose parents help with homework improve their performance significantly.

That seems to run counter to another frequent objection to homework, which is that it privileges kids who are already advantaged. Well-educated parents are better able to provide help, the argument goes, and it’s easier for affluent parents to provide a quiet space for kids to work in—along with a computer and internet access . While those things may be true, not assigning homework—or assigning ineffective homework—can end up privileging advantaged students even more.

Students from less educated families are most in need of the boost that effective homework can provide, because they’re less likely to acquire academic knowledge and vocabulary at home. And homework can provide a way for lower-income parents—who often don’t have time to volunteer in class or participate in parents’ organizations—to forge connections to their children’s schools. Rather than giving up on homework because of social inequities, schools could help parents support homework in ways that don’t depend on their own knowledge—for example, by recruiting others to help, as some low-income demographic groups have been able to do . Schools could also provide quiet study areas at the end of the day, and teachers could assign homework that doesn’t rely on technology.

Another argument against homework is that it causes students to feel overburdened and stressed.  While that may be true at schools serving affluent populations, students at low-performing ones often don’t get much homework at all—even in high school. One study found that lower-income ninth-graders “consistently described receiving minimal homework—perhaps one or two worksheets or textbook pages, the occasional project, and 30 minutes of reading per night.” And if they didn’t complete assignments, there were few consequences. I discovered this myself when trying to tutor students in writing at a high-poverty high school. After I expressed surprise that none of the kids I was working with had completed a brief writing assignment, a teacher told me, “Oh yeah—I should have told you. Our students don’t really do homework.”

If and when disadvantaged students get to college, their relative lack of study skills and good homework habits can present a serious handicap. After noticing that black and Hispanic students were failing her course in disproportionate numbers, a professor at the University of North Carolina decided to make some changes , including giving homework assignments that required students to quiz themselves without consulting their notes. Performance improved across the board, but especially for students of color and the disadvantaged. The gap between black and white students was cut in half, and the gaps between Hispanic and white students—along with that between first-generation college students and others—closed completely.

There’s no reason this kind of support should wait until students get to college. To be most effective—both in terms of instilling good study habits and building students’ knowledge—homework assignments that boost learning should start in elementary school.

Some argue that young children just need time to chill after a long day at school. But the “ten-minute rule”—recommended by homework researchers—would have first graders doing ten minutes of homework, second graders twenty minutes, and so on. That leaves plenty of time for chilling, and even brief assignments could have a significant impact if they were well-designed.

But a fundamental problem with homework at the elementary level has to do with the curriculum, which—partly because of standardized testing— has narrowed to reading and math. Social studies and science have been marginalized or eliminated, especially in schools where test scores are low. Students spend hours every week practicing supposed reading comprehension skills like “making inferences” or identifying “author’s purpose”—the kinds of skills that the tests try to measure—with little or no attention paid to content.

But as research has established, the most important component in reading comprehension is knowledge of the topic you’re reading about. Classroom time—or homework time—spent on illusory comprehension “skills” would be far better spent building knowledge of the very subjects schools have eliminated. Even if teachers try to take advantage of retrieval practice—say, by asking students to recall what they’ve learned that day about “making comparisons” or “sequence of events”—it won’t have much impact.

If we want to harness the potential power of homework—particularly for disadvantaged students—we’ll need to educate teachers about what kind of assignments actually work. But first, we’ll need to start teaching kids something substantive about the world, beginning as early as possible.

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• DOI: 10.3102/00346543076001001
• Corpus ID: 146452256

Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003

• H. Cooper , Jorgianne Civey Robinson , Erika A. Patall
• Published 1 March 2006
• Review of Educational Research

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• Publications
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• Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement?

IZA DP No. 8142: Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement?

published in: Education Economics, 2017, 25 (1), 45-59

Although previous research has shown that homework improves students' academic achievement, the majority of these studies use data on students' homework time from retrospective questionnaires, which are less accurate than time-diary data. However, most time-diary data sets do not contain outcome measures, and thus are limited in the questions they can answer. One data set that does have both time-diary and outcome information is the combined Child Development Supplement (CDS) and the Transition to Adulthood Survey (TA) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Students complete time diaries as part of the CDS and then a few years later provide information on outcomes in the TA. The CDS provides us with time diaries for both weekdays and weekend days, providing a good picture of homework over the course of a week rather than on just a single day. For high school graduates, we explore the effects of time spent on homework on two measures of academic achievement: high school GPA and college attendance by age 20. We find that homework time increases the probability of college attendance for boys. In addition, when we look at homework performed as a sole activity, we find that homework increases high school GPA for boys.

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In this article, research conducted in the United States since 1987 on the effects of homework is summarized. Studies are grouped into four research designs. The authors found that all studies, regardless of type, had design flaws. However, both within and across design types, there was generally consistent evidence for a positive influence of homework on achievement. Studies that reported simple homework-achievement correlations revealed evidence that a stronger correlation existed (a) in Grades 7-12 than in K-6 and (b) when students rather than parents reported time on homework. No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework-achievement link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading as opposed to math). On the basis of these results and others, the authors suggest future research.

KEYWORDS: homework, meta-analysis.

Homework can be defined as any task assigned by schoolteachers intended for students to carry out during nonschool hours (Cooper, 1989). This definition explicitly excludes (a) in-school guided study; (b) home study courses delivered through the mail, television, audio or vidéocassette, or the Internet; and (c) extracurricular activities such as sports and participation in clubs. The phrase "intended for students to carry out during nonschool hours" is used because students may complete homework assignments during study hall, library time, or even during subsequent classes.

Variations in homework can be classified according to its (a) amount, (b) skill area, (c) purpose, (d) degree of choice for the student, (e) completion deadline, (f) degree of individualization, and (g) social context. Variations in the amount of homework can appear as differences in both the frequency and length of individual assignments. Assignments can range over all the skill areas taught in school.

The purposes of homework assignments can be divided into (a) instructional and (b) noninstructional objectives (cf. Epstein, 1988,2001; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2001; Lee & Pruitt, 1979). The most common instructional purpose of homework is to provide the student with an opportunity to practice or review material that has already been presented in class (Becker & Epstein, 1982). Preparation assignments introduce material to help students obtain the maximum benefit when the new material is covered in class (Muhlenbruck, Cooper, Nye, & Lindsay, 1999). Extension homework involves the transfer of previously learned...

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Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research, 1987–2003

2006, Review of Educational Research

In this article, research conducted in the United States since 1987 on the effects of homework is summarized. Studies are grouped into four research designs. The authors found that all studies, regardless of type, had design flaws. However, both within and across design types, there was generally consistent evidence for a positive influence of homework on achievement. Studies that reported simple homework–achievement correlations revealed evidence that a stronger correlation existed (a) in Grades 7–12 than in K–6 and (b) when students rather than parents reported time on homework. No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework–achievement link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading as opposed to math). On the basis of these results and others, the authors suggest future research.

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This paper reviews the research literature on the relationship between parental involvement (PI) and academic achievement, with special focus on the secondary school (middle and high school) level. The results first present how individual PI variables correlate with academic achievement and then move to more complex analyses of multiple variables on the general construct described in the literature. Several PI variables with correlations to academic achievement show promise: (a) communication between children and parents about school activities and plans, (b) parents holding high expectations/aspirations for their children's schooling, and (c) parents employing an authoritative parenting style. We end the results section by discussing the findings in light of the limitations of nonexperimental research and the different effects of children's versus parents' perspectives on academic achievement.

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• Student Success

Students Link Their Success to Affordability

Students across every institution type and demographic—including household income—link the cost of tuition to their academic success in a new analysis of Student Voice data.

By  Colleen Flaherty

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When asked what their institutions could do outside of a classroom context to most promote their academic success, Student Voice respondents’ No. 1 response from a list of options—by far and across nearly every demographic group and institution type—is “make tuition more affordable” so they can better balance academics with finances and/or work.

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Students across income levels indicate paying for college impacts their academic success, according to a new analysis of data from Inside Higher Ed ’s annual Student Voice survey with Generation Lab .

When asked what their institutions could do outside of a classroom context to most promote their academic success, the No. 1 response from list of options—by far and across nearly every demographic group and institution type—is “make tuition more affordable” so they can better balance academics with finances and/or work.

Over all, 55 percent of the survey’s 5,025 two- and four-year respondents selected this, above other popular options such as: Create more opportunities for paid on-campus work, including internships or leadership opportunities within students’ fields of interest (49 percent); promote opportunities for social connection and building a sense of belonging (32 percent); create more research opportunities for undergraduates (31 percent); introduce more mental health initiatives and services (30 percent); and build and expand online platforms to help track degree progress (28 percent).

That so many students want more affordable tuition probably isn’t surprising: Public confidence in higher education is waning, largely due to concerns about costs—which students share . Rising costs have outpaced aid including federal Pell Grants, which now cover the lowest share of college costs in that program’s history.

That students link tuition costs to their academic success isn’t necessarily surprising, either: Concern about paying for college consistently ranks as a top reason students consider stopping out of their programs. And postsecondary attainment remains stratified by household income level, including among students who enroll in college.

What is notable is that Student Voice respondents across demographics—such as race, first-generation status and especially household income level—so consistently flag paying for tuition as a top concern with respect to their academic success.

That is, 55 percent of respondents with household incomes of less than $50,000; 55 percent of those with household incomes of about $50,000 to $130,000; and 54 percent of those with household incomes of more than $130,000 say that lowering the cost of tuition would most promote their academic success.

Only among students with household incomes exceeding $200,000, the highest bracket in the survey, does lowering tuition drop to the No. 2 most popular institutional action that could promote their academic success (47 percent). The top choice for this group is create more opportunities for paid on-campus work (52 percent)—which, of course, also relates to finances.

Some differences do emerge when looking specifically at institution type. Community college students (44 percent) are less likely to select lowering tuition than their four-year college counterparts (59 percent). But even within institution types, lower-, middle- and higher-income students are all about equally likely to choose lowering tuition.

One other difference of note: Region appears to matter, with students in the far West (65 percent) and Rocky Mountains (71 percent) even likelier than those elsewhere to say lowering tuition would best promote their academic success.

Affordability Matters

What does it mean that students across income levels say that lowering their tuition would increase their academic success? Phillip Levine, Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, recently published for Brookings Institution an analysis of college affordability beyond sticker prices—which have risen substantially in recent decades, but which most students don’t actually pay—and beyond average net price—what students actually pay after financial aid but which is relevant mostly to students with average finances.

As Levine wrote, “What about everyone else?”

Focusing on dependent students attending four-year institutions living away from their parents, Levine found that net price paid by students attending public institutions has risen for families at all income levels, with increases largest for higher-income students.

What does that look like, in numbers? In 1995–96, students with family incomes under $50,000 typically faced a net price of about $12,500 at public institutions. Net price increased with income at that time such that every additional dollar translated to around a 16-cent increase. So $75,000-household income students faced a net price of around $16,000. Net price maxed out at around $19,000, at $100,000 in family income.

By 2019–20, students with family incomes below $50,000 faced a typical public institution net price of $18,000. Those with family incomes of $125,000 typically paid the maximum net price of $29,000.

The dynamic was similar for students at four-year private nonprofit institutions over time, though these prices were even higher for students at all income levels each year. One big difference is that private nonprofit net prices for lower- and middle-income students stopped rising in 2007–08. Private colleges are not becoming more affordable for low- and middle-income students, however, Levine wrote, as students with family incomes under $50,000 are still being asked to pay around $25,000 to attend a typical private institution. It’s just that the amount is no longer rising faster than the rate of inflation.

Levine concluded that, “college costs are still too high, and increasingly so over time. College is indeed expensive for higher-income students, but the affordability problem is much greater—and more consequential—for lower- and middle-income students. If they can’t afford it, they can’t go.”

He underscores this finding in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, saying that students’ concerns about affordability vis-a-vis academic success probably exist across a continuum, in which the lowest-income students face very real threats to their ability to remain in college, and higher-income students experience financial stress—but not to the same degree.

“If you’re a low-income household and your parents make $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, and your public institution is charging you $15,000 or $20,000, where’s that money supposed to come from? That falls into the category of virtually impossible,” he says. “If your parents are making $100,000 and your institution is charging you $25,000 or $30,000, you probably can’t afford that either. But I would argue it’s probably not quite as bad, or as impossible, as for the lower-income kids. And that’s generally what institutions charge … I think that we have a lot of problems with affordability in education.”

Returning to the question of where the money is supposed to come from, Levine says a forthcoming paper of his suggests that “the way students are getting around this problem is by working more. And working more in terms of academic success isn’t great.”

At least among Student Voice respondents, those working full-time, part-time and not at all are all about as likely to say lowering tuition would promote their academic success. But asked elsewhere in the survey what their top stressors are, students rank balancing their academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities as most stressful (47 percent). This was especially true among adult learners (60 percent), students at two-year institutions (54 percent) and first-generation students (53 percent).

Beyond just being expensive, Levine says higher ed “has a tremendous lack of transparency” around costs, which “hurts in terms of students making well-reasoned decisions about how to maneuver through the higher education system. It has repercussions for public policy in terms of how we finance the higher education system.”

If you’re a low-income household and your parents make $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year, and your public institution is charging you $15,000 or $20,000, where’s that money supposed to come from? That falls into the category of virtually impossible. If your parents are making $100,000 and your institution is charging you $25,000 or $30,000, you probably can’t afford that either.” Phillip Levine, Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College

Wes Armstrong, director of financial aid operations and technology for the University of North Carolina system, says that students’ concerns about affordability are grounded in reality, as it’s probably a “stretch” to imagine a $150,000-income family of five has some $20,000 lying around for college—and that’s only if there’s one student attending at a time. But Armstrong says students’ fears about affordability are also linked to loan aversion and a general lack of understanding of the financial resources that are available to them.

“Financial aid is super confusing,” and even more so this year, he says, given the issues associated with the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA). Armstrong adds that institutions can help students gain insight into how much college actually costs and into the aid options available to them by streamlining the financial aid process to the extent they’re able—and by offering loan counseling.

Kathy Hastings, director for outreach and communications for the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, who’s worked with Armstrong on affordability issues, says her team offers training to high school counselors and college access organizations, in addition to virtual programs, on how to pay for college.

Calculating Affordability

The National College Attainment Network’s own affordability formula proposes that net price plus $741 for emergency expenses—the average emergency aid allotment from Scholarship America—should not exceed the combined total of:

• Student wages from 500 hours of work at the state minimum wage (10 hours per week for 50 weeks per year)
• Federal student loans (the maximum federal subsidized loan limit for first-year students)

“Even for those higher-income families, it can feel overwhelming when you can’t see it,” she says. “So I’m always trying to think of, ‘How do we make this feel more manageable, so they can get their arms around it?’” She praises institutions that try to demystify the process of paying for college, like Durham Technical Community College, via its “Ways to Pay for College” resource.

“There are some colleges that are doing a really good job of making this information easier to understand, easier to find.”

Groups like the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) also emphasize the importance of increasing funding for college. NCAN’s federal policy recommendations include doubling the Pell Grant, adopting federal–state partnerships to provide more funding to colleges and investing in proven college completion initiatives. Its state policy recommendations include increasing funding for state financial aid and state colleges and universities and adopting equitable free college programs.

According to one NCAN study on college affordability, just 31 percent of public four-year colleges and 63 percent of two-year colleges are considered affordable.

What is your institution doing to offset the financial stress of paying college for students so they can focus more on their academics? Tell us , we’d like to write about it.

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