What One Financial Aid Expert Learned as a Parent
Amy Glynn has spent more than 20 years working in higher education and financial aid leadership.
But when she recently helped her daughter navigate the college search and financial aid process, she found the experience surprisingly difficult.
After interacting with more than 20 institutions, Glynn said the process often lacked clarity, consistency, and straightforward communication around cost and affordability.
Her experience reinforces broader national data. According to Strada research, only one-third of students and families describe the financial aid process as seamless or easy to understand.
Why financial aid friction creates barriers for students
For many students and families, financial aid information is fragmented across multiple systems and formats.
Cost of attendance may appear in one portal. Scholarships may appear somewhere else. Aid eligibility and financing details are often separated as well.
Even standard programs like the Western Undergraduate Exchange are presented differently by institutions, making comparisons difficult for families trying to make enrollment decisions.
Glynn argues that institutions need to simplify the process by delivering clearer, more integrated financial aid communication.
What institutions can do differently
Glynn’s recommendations are intentionally simple.
Institutions should provide financial aid offers in formats families can easily access and understand. Terminology should remain consistent across systems and communications: students should not need to navigate multiple portals to determine what college will actually cost.
She also argues institutions should adopt a more human-centered approach when students and families contact financial aid offices with questions.
The goal is not only transparency. It is reducing uncertainty during one of the most consequential decisions students make.
Why financial aid teams are under extraordinary pressure
Glynn emphasizes that financial aid professionals themselves are not the problem.
Institutions are managing rapidly changing regulations, complex compliance requirements, outdated technology systems, and staffing limitations simultaneously.
Financial aid offices are balancing federal requirements, state regulations, institutional budgeting pressures, and student support responsibilities all at once.
This creates a broader institutional challenge rather than an individual staffing issue.
Why presidents should pay attention
Financial aid communication has become a student success issue.
Glynn points to another critical statistic: nearly 87 percent of students who stop out of college cite financial barriers as a major reason for leaving.
At a time when more than 42 million Americans have some college but no credential, reducing financial friction may be one of the most important student-centered strategies institutions can pursue.
Transcript
Wes (00:00.898) Amy, I understand that your daughter graduates from high school tomorrow. Is that right? Tomorrow. Big day. Big day. OK.
Amy Glynn (00:08.959) Tomorrow, 10 a.m.
Fake t-
Wes (00:16.142) No, no, no, I’m going to change the subject from the graduation to the year prior to graduation. You’ve been looking at higher ed institutions with your daughter, and I know you’ve made some campus visits, and she’s very fortunate to have a parent who has very deep expertise in enrollment, in financial aid, in all the details in higher education.
Amy Glynn (00:19.199) Okay. Okay.
Amy Glynn (00:30.239) Mm-hmm.
Wes (00:44.407) And I would love to hear your experience and how that went for you and your daughter as you were looking for higher education institutions that fit for her.
Amy Glynn (00:55.455) Yeah, I wish I could tell you that 20 plus years in higher ed and financial aid was an advantage for us as we shopped universities, but unfortunately, I’m not sure that it was. The process was very difficult, a little bit disenfranchising as someone who has communicated with students about cost and affordability for so long. And I’ll share with you that
That financial friction that we’ve talked about where students just are not getting the information they need in a consumable way about cost, affordability, value is really real. Stratus research actually showed that only one third of students and parents found it to be a seamless, good, understandable process.
And we interacted with over 20 institutions across the nation. And I can’t say that a third of them did it well.
Wes (02:03.106) So that’s not, I mean, we’ve got this really persuasive anecdote coming from one of our, you know, most highly proficient financial aid experts that you could have out there looking. I mean, you’ve run financial aid at institutions, you understand this, and we have the strata data that tells us that only a third of students and parents had a seamless.
experience in this or a smooth experience. So we’re seeing this anecdotally as well as in the data.
Amy Glynn (02:39.957) Yep. Yeah, we absolutely are. And I would say, if I could give advice, I would remind institutions to get back to basics. Communicate.
Wes (02:51.309) What does that look like?
Amy Glynn (02:53.759) you know, this is gonna sound really crazy. It means that you send a paper financial aid offer letter or you send an offer letter in a PDF format to a family. You don’t send them out to your student information systems portal where they have to find cost of attendance in one place, scholarships in another, financial aid in another. Some institutions portals only give you the information per semester, not per year.
We are in Arizona, so we have access to WUE, which is the Western Undergraduate Exchange, which is a tuition reduction for students who attend. And I can tell you, institutions all display it differently. Some take it right out of their cost of attendance, some list it as a scholarship, some do something else with it. And so there’s no consistency even within the awarding of the same fund type across all of the institutions.
So we need to get back to basics. We need to use the same terminology that we’ve all agreed to in the NASPA Principles of Excellence. We need to look at best practice and communicating cost, comprehensive cost and affordability. And we need to be a little bit more humanistic when a family calls in with questions for our aid offices.
Wes (04:18.464) Amy, is really, it’s very basic. We need to get back to the basics is what I’m hearing.
Amy Glynn (04:25.374) We do, but Wes, I also feel like as much disappointment as I have for the experience and concern that I have for students who don’t have a parent who’s familiar with the industry. I also need to say like being a financial aid professional right now is not easy. The technology is not built to match the needs of the financial aid system that we have. The regulatory environment is not about creating the best student experience.
Wes (04:41.879) Right.
Amy Glynn (04:54.056) and institutions are trying to balance the demands of the Department of Education and their state regulatory bodies with the needs of their students. We all know that institutions are being very, they’re being very deliberate about budgeting, about hiring, about expenses. And so for presidents to hear that.
high quality staff, that high quality technology and investing in those student experiences around financial aid is really, really important. 87 % of students who have stepped out of school said that some form of financial barrier is the reason that they left, right? We have 42 million students on college with no degree and 87 % of them are saying that it is financial barriers that is causing them to step away from their education.
Wes (05:35.0) Right.
Wes (05:46.264) So every president should perk up at this conversation to be like, hey, need to have some, this is an area that requires and deserves presidential attention.
Amy Glynn (06:00.242) It does. Attention in a very thoughtful, inquisitive manner. I just want to remind people, now is not the time to attack. Everybody has the best intentions that are working with our students. So just keeping that in mind as we ask the right questions about what does our student experience look
Wes (06:23.788) Yeah, we can attest to the pressure of the financial aid systems at every institution and the personnel because we’re working on executive rulemaking, I mean, on week-to-week basis and things are changing and deadlines are insane. It’s just a really tough time to be able to manage that side as well as focus on student transparency, reducing financial friction.
Amy Glynn (06:39.443) Yes.
It is.
Wes (06:50.818) communicating very clearly when regulations are changing on a timeline that’s almost unthinkable in the past.
Amy Glynn (07:01.396) It truly is. Yes, it is unbelievable what is being managed right now. And that’s why we need the right systems and structures in place to be able to navigate this more seamlessly in the future.
Wes (07:16.334) Well, Amy, we appreciate you bringing your parental experience as well as your experience as a higher ed administrator and professional. Thanks for joining us today.
Amy Glynn (07:27.765) Thanks for having me.