Making College Affordable

College affordability is a complicated and multi-faceted challenge. The price students and families are asked to pay has steadily increased over the past several decades, despite the existence of federal, state, and institutional grant programs, which are often not sufficient to fill the gap in need. Just as troubling, most students and families aren't given clear and useful information about what they should expect to pay or how to navigate the system. This report offers 11 best practices to institutions to help students pay for college and stay in school. These strategies are organized into three categories: clarifying financial information, easing the financial burden, and filling in financial aid gaps. Specifically, the authors discuss how schools can provide students with better information to help them make more informed choices, to make going to college more affordable, and to understand how financial aid programs work so that they can maximize the aid they receive.