Public Goods Practice is investigating how colleges and their outside consultants use families’ financial information to set aid offers and decide whom to recruit.
What we’re looking into
We are investigating college advertising, financial aid, and cost of attendance in higher education. Part of what we’re looking at is the role of outside consultants (often called enrollment management companies) that many schools hire to shape their financial aid strategy. These firms use data about you and your family, sometimes gathered before you ever apply, to help schools target advertising based on your individual and household data and predict how much aid it would take to get you to enroll. In practice, that can mean two students with similar finances and similar applications receive very different offers, not because of need or merit, but because an algorithm predicted one family would pay more. Many families don’t know this is happening, and families have no way to know whether their offer reflects their circumstances or a pricing model. We think students deserve to know how their aid was calculated – and whether the process was fair.
Who we’d like to hear from
Did you receive a lot of advertisements from specific schools or financial aid offers in those advertisements? What did schools tell you or your child how they came up with your financial aid offer? Was the offer final? Was the offer fair? Was there a gap between the offer and the cost of attendance? Did they say anything about how to bridge that gap? We’d love to hear from:
- Students and parents who received a college financial aid offer in 2021 or later
- Families who took out, or tried to take out, a Parent PLUS or private loan to cover what aid didn’t, especially if the PLUS loan was denied
- Families who decided not to attend a college that offered aid
- Parents who got college mail or email addressed to them before they’d ever given the college their contact information
- Former financial aid, admissions or enrollment staff, at a college or a consulting firm, who have worked with these tools. Please don’t share any documents or information your employer considers confidential.
PGP’s goal is to achieve greater transparency when it comes to financial aid packaging and cost of attendance so that students and families may make more informed decisions. But first, we need to hear from students and families going through (or who recently completed) the process. No lawsuit has been filed, and we are not claiming that any particular college or company has broken the law. That’s what we’re working to find out.
What happens next?
After you submit your information through the form, someone from Public Goods Practice will be in touch within a couple days.
Attorney Advertising. Responsible attorney: W. Austin Hinkle, Public Goods Practice LLP, 1502 W. 7th St., Ste. 100, Erie, PA 16502.