Higher Ed Data Central: Federal Financial Aid Recipients by Income
18 Sep 2013
The new data on federal financial aid recipients that we explored last week continues to yield new insight. Recall that the data is not perfect, as incomes are counted only for “full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates paying the in-state or in-district tuition rate who received Title IV federal student aid,” so many students are not included. Nevertheless, the data covers roughly 1.86 million students in 2010–11, and we can learn quite a bit by examining where these students attend college.
The first chart shows how many of these students received Title IV federal financial aid—Pell grants, federal student loans, etc.—by income range. Over half of the recipients have an income below $30,000. The rest are almost evenly split among the other income ranges.
The next four charts repeat this graphic for different types of colleges, though we have rescaled the y-axis for each.