The Top 4 Issues We See on College Financial Aid Websites
A SightLine + Meadow collaboration
Clear communication on university financial aid pages is paramount for ensuring education affordability and accessibility. These pages serve as crucial gateways for students seeking information about available financial assistance, scholarships, grants, and loans. In a landscape where the cost of education continues to rise, affordability and easily comprehensible content on financial aid pages empowers prospective and current students to make informed decisions about their academic pursuits. The following points are the top four issues we frequently see on college and university financial aid pages as consultants and higher ed professionals who bring a fresh outside perspective.
NOT PUBLISHING INSTITUTIONAL AWARDS AND CRITERIA ONLINE
The absence of clear information on institutional awards and eligibility criteria online can significantly impact the early stages of the student recruitment funnel. Prospective students and their families need transparent details about available awards to make informed decisions (i.e. price transparency). If scholarship amounts and qualifications are missing, prospective students can incorrectly assume the cost of your institution is out of their reach and look elsewhere, affecting critical early funnel volume. The cost to attend should not be a secret!
OUTDATED OR INACCURATE NET PRICE CALCULATOR
While the stated goal of a net price calculator (NPC) is to provide students with the estimated cost of a given school after aid is factored in, many net price calculators fail to do so. NPCs are often hidden on websites or take too long to complete. Many haven’t been updated in years because, depending on their NPC, this can be a time-consuming task. And even more NPCs only include the most basic information and aid, leaving out institutional grants that could be as high as $20K or more depending on the school. As a result, even the students who manage to find the NPC walk away with an inaccurate price and incomplete picture of their potential aid. Universities should provide net price calculators that are student-friendly and accurate for each student.
COMPLEX NAVIGATION
A user-friendly experience is paramount in the digital era and complicated website navigation can make it challenging for users to find the information they need. This may include unclear menu structures, buried pages, broken links, or missing pages. Universities should streamline their online platforms, minimizing the number of clicks required to access crucial financial aid information and resources and ensure all links are active.
TOO MUCH JARGON
Check out a financial aid page and you are likely to see a lot of jargon, acronyms and complicated language. Many students and families get lost in a sea of words and give up. Universities should review the language on their websites carefully and strive for a reading level of around 8th grade (there are free and paid tools out there to help you assess your readability), be intentional about word choice and consider multilingual support.
In conclusion, addressing these top issues on university financial aid pages is essential for creating an effective and student-centric financial aid process. By prioritizing transparency, affordability, and accessibility, universities can optimize their financial aid pages to better serve the diverse needs of prospective students throughout the recruitment funnel.
About Meadow:
Meadow’s student-friendly tools use advanced personalization and modern consumer design to improve the financial experience for everyone–from institutions to the students they serve. MeadowPrice is the only net price calculator that is designed to be both accurate and student-friendly.
About SightLine:
SightLine is a nationally certified Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB) serving predictive analytics and consulting exclusively to higher education institutions. Want to learn about how our analytics + consulting services can optimize your awarding and increase your price transparency and ultimately enroll and support students? Contact us!
