Annual Survey on State-Sponsored Student Financial Aid

By MacGregor Obergfell

In November, the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs (NASSGAP)  published their annual report on state issued postsecondary financial aid. The data from the 2016-2017 academic year provides the following:

• In the 2016-2017 academic year, states issued $12.8 billion in student aid, a 2.8% increase from the previous year.
  • 86% of state aid was issued in the form of grants, totalling $11 billion, a 2.3% increase from the previous year. These grants went to 4 million students.
  • Of grant aid, 76% was solely need based aid and 24% was non-need based aid.
• Undergraduate need based aid increased 3% in the 2016-17 academic year to $8.2 billion.
  • 70.3% of all undergraduate aid dollars are need based grants while 21.8% are non-need based. The remaining dollars comprise of loans, work study programs, tuition waivers, conditional grants, and loan assumptions.
  • Graduate aid dollars strike a different portrait. 38.5% of graduate aid is in the form of tuition waivers, 33.5% comes in the form of need based aid, and 9.6% is comprised of merit based aid. Remaining graduate aid comes in the form of loans or loan assumptions.
  • 46.1% of all undergraduate aid awards are solely need based. Non-need based awards account for 17.4% of all awards, and 36.5% of awards are issued as a combination of both need and merit.
• Eight states, California, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, and Virginia, account for 70% of undergraduate need based aid. Only two states, New Hampshire and Georgia, do not have a need based aid program.
• In the 2016-2017 academic year, non-grant aid increased 5% to $1.8 billion. Non-grant aid includes loans, loan assumptions, conditional grants, work study, and tuition waivers, which are the largest portion of non-grant aid.