Students link trust in higher education to affordability and financial stress to their academic performance. A new round of results from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey series, out today, delves deeper into the connection between students’ finances and their success. One key finding: Most students report some level of surprise with the full cost of attending college, including but not limited to tuition and other directly billable expenses. At least a quarter of students have trouble budgeting as a result.

In another set of findings, 36 percent of students say that an unexpected expense of $1,000, or even less (see breakdown below), could threaten their ability to stay enrolled. Another 22 percent say the same of an expense between $1,001 and $2,500. This is the kind of need that many emergency aid programs are designed for, but 64 percent of respondents don’t even know if their institution offers such assistance.

Mordecai Ian Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora in Colorado, is walking 71 miles over three days next month to raise awareness of his own college’s emergency fund—specifically, to get community members to match a $71,000 donation. The fund started at just $8,000 during the pandemic, Brownlee said, but the college’s students frequently face unanticipated medical, utility, transportation and other costs. Without a way to bridge those gaps, their persistence is at risk. Even the standard grant of $250 can make a big difference, he said, though many of the college’s students are more chronically food- and housing-insecure.

Because need is a spectrum and many needs overlap, the college offers multiple forms of assistance and tries to build awareness of each where possible: Staff at the college food bank advertise the emergency grant fund, academic advisers act as case managers and so on. There’s also a community component: The college partners with a local nonprofit to offer students in need free groceries, and it recently got a city bus stop reinstated outside its primary campus so students wouldn’t have to spend money on rideshares, especially in the winter months.

“Previously, higher education was really seen as this transactional interaction of sorts, where you’re just focusing on delivering the learning outcomes—the wholeness and care of a person wasn’t necessarily a part of these institutional issues,” Brownlee said. “Yet if that person is in that classroom and hungry, there will be no retention, there will be no persistence, there will be no completion.”

Helping students realize social and economic mobility means addressing financial crises, food and housing insecurity, mental health and mentorship needs, and more, he added: “These are people who have a dream but may not have a network.”

Bahar Akman Imboden, managing director of the Hildreth Institute, which is focused on state-level practices and policies that enhance affordability, access and student success, said the new Student Voice findings reinforce how “lack of clarity around the true cost of attendance can derail students.” They also resonate with policy discussions in Massachusetts, where Hildreth is based, she said, as the state recently cut stipends for low-income students after the semester had started, reducing eligibility by up to $400 in some cases.

“We’ve struggled to communicate that even what may seem like a small amount can completely upend a student’s education,” Imboden said, and the new data “will be incredibly helpful in making that case to decision-makers.”

Students on Cost of Attendance, Emergency Aid and More

Here are more details about this newest round of survey results from our main annual Student Voice survey of more than 5,000 two- and four-year students.

1. Just 27 percent of students have a clear understanding of the full cost of attendance.

Asked about their grasp of the full cost of attending college, including tuition and fees but also housing, course materials, transportation, food and more, just over a quarter of students say they have a solid understanding that allows them to budget appropriately. This increases to 29 percent among students who have never seriously considered stopping out of college and decreases to 21 percent among students who have seriously considered stopping out—aligning with prior research identifying college costs as a top reason students do not persist.

The plurality of all Student Voice respondents, 47 percent, understand most costs, but not all. The remainder have less to no understanding and face various degrees of surprise about associated costs, challenging their ability to budget or pay for things they need.

2. A majority of students report that surprise costs, in some cases as little as $100, could put their enrollment at risk.

A slight plurality of students, 24 percent, say that an unforeseen cost exceeding $2,500 would challenge their ability to stay enrolled, while 19 percent say no surprise cost could threaten their persistence. But the remainder indicate that various expenses below $2,500 could push them out of college: Roughly one in five each say this of a $500 to $1,000 expense and of a $1,001 to $2,500 one. Particular differences emerge between continuing- and first-generation students, with 29 percent of the former and 46 percent of the latter indicating that amounts of $1,000 or less could challenge their ability to stay enrolled. The pattern is similar for four-year versus two-year students and for private nonprofit versus public institution students, with community college and public institution students significantly more likely than their respective counterparts to report that an unforeseen expense of $1,000 or less could threaten their persistence.

According to Trellis Strategies’ most recent Student Financial Wellness Survey, 56 percent of students would have trouble obtaining even $500 in cash or credit to meet an unexpected expense, and 68 percent have run out of money at least once since the beginning of the year. Many emergency grant programs are capped at $500 or less, but all these numbers can help local aid efforts.

3. Awareness of available aid is lacking.

Nearly two in three Student Voice respondents don’t know if their institution offers emergency aid, and just 5 percent have accessed emergency aid at their college. Just about one in 10 students each say that they know the criteria for eligibility for such aid, or that they know how to apply for it. Black (9 percent) and Hispanic students (7 percent) are somewhat more likely to have accessed such aid than white (4 percent) and Asian American and Pacific Islander students (3 percent).

A 2016 survey by NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education found that three in four institutions offered emergency aid of some kind, including one-time grants, loans and completion scholarships of less than $1,500 for students facing unexpected financial crises, as well as food pantries and housing and transportation assistance. The pandemic put a spotlight on student financial insecurity and brought new, if temporary, funding opportunities. Taken together, these data points suggest a large gap between available assistance and students’ awareness of it.

4. Some students are more stressed about finances than they are about academics.

Balancing academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities, including work, remains a top source of stress for students, at 50 percent, compared to 48 percent in last year’s main Student Voice survey. Some 38 percent of students also cite paying for college as a top stressor in 2025, up from last year’s 34 percent. Fewer, but still a significant share—22 percent—flag paying for personal expenses. Private nonprofit students are actually less likely than their public institution peers to say paying for college is a top stressor, at 22 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. The four-year–versus–two-year split here is narrower, at 37 percent versus 43 percent.

Some 37 percent of all students say short-term academic pressure is a top issue, while 38 percent cite job and internship searches. These are both more traditional stressors associated with college, but the latter has a clear financial dimension.

Addressing Higher Ed’s Cost Transparency Problem

Anika Van Eaton, vice president of policy at uAspire, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing economic mobility for underrepresented students, said that even financial aid offers don’t always include the full cost of attendance, citing a 2022 federal Government Accountability Office report finding that 91 percent of colleges do not provide accurate information in these letters. According to the report, colleges should include a net price that includes all key costs, subtracting only grants and scholarships—though many don’t include information on books, off-campus housing and meals, and other living expenses. Some colleges also “make their net price seem cheaper by factoring in loans that students will eventually have to repay,” the office found, while about a quarter don’t even include information on tuition and fees. Forthcoming research from uAspire suggests that colleges are improving in this area, Van Eaton said, but, ultimately, “we need standardized financial aid offers using the same terminology that show a complete cost picture so students are guaranteed to receive this crucial information up front.”

Students also need to understand college costs “beyond just seeing the numbers,” she added. One implication: High schools have an important role to play in educating and supporting soon-to-be graduates as they “navigate deciding their postsecondary plans and making what is likely one of the largest financial decisions of their lives.”

Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said students tend to focus more on direct costs, or what “they actually see on their bill,” versus all the indirect costs that go along with attending college. NASFAA, which has a voluntary College Cost Transparency Initiative, seeks to promote accuracy and clarity in financial aid offers by encouraging even small shifts, such as colleges using standard terminology, “or making it clear what is loan aid versus gift aid—things like that. Because students are, in fact, not clear on what their total cost is in many situations,” Austin added.

Realistic indirect costs estimates are also crucial—and these are “are tricky for many schools to construct,” she said. Forthcoming research from NASFAA examines how institutions are calculating indirect costs and cost of attendance in general, in part to identity best practices. “Some schools have super robust cost of attendance construction processes where they’re surveying students, looking at, maybe, local data that they have access to, and putting that together every year,” Austin said. “Other schools maybe just have a set amount—they don’t review it annually, or they just blanket increase it because they know costs are going up.”

A provision in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in 2020 allowed the Education Department to begin regulating cost of attendance, but it hasn’t exercised that power, and experts are divided on whether that is the best approach.

Congress continues to take interest in cost transparency. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last month published a request for information on ways to improve transparency to lower costs. “Americans want the most value for their hard-earned money,” wrote Senator Bill Cassidy, the committee’s Republican chair. “They are used to shopping for products where prices are clearly labeled and information on quality is readily available. But when they shop for a college—one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives—it’s much harder to compare price and value across the available options.”

Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi, a first-generation, fourth-year undergraduate studying history and religious studies at the University of Chicago, said she used to think attending a private nonprofit institution like hers was financially out of reach. That’s until a high school counselor—and her mother—pushed her to apply to a scholarship program through which she received a full ride to Chicago, including a cost-of-living stipend that Manthi said generally reflects the indirect costs of attendance.

Finances did become less predictable when Manthi was studying in Paris during her sophomore year, however. She’d had to front the payment for her plane ticket and spent much of her savings to replace a damaged computer during finals week before she left. Once abroad without a meal plan for the first time, and without a campus job, she ran out of cash with a few weeks left in the term.

Luckily, she was able to access emergency aid through the university, she recalled.

“They have it through the bursar’s office, where you can fill out an emergency aid application,” she said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I just need to be able to get food for the next two weeks before I go home,’ and I provided the proof that my laptop broke, since a lot of that was the money I was going to spend.”

Manthi said she does sometimes worry about what might happen if she needs significant additional emergency aid before she graduates, since it’s such a limited resource. Complications around costs and housing also effectively stymied her tentative plan to study abroad for another term. Still, she said she credits the university’s Odyssey Scholars cohort model and Center for College Student Success with connecting her to resources and peers who have made navigating college’s hidden financial curriculum easier. This includes information about various emergency aid resources and job listings.

“Just making sure that students have access to that information from the get-go was very helpful to me,” she said. Of her funding package generally, which includes a federal Pell Grant dollars and other institutional aid, Manthi added, “Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”

Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”

—Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi

In terms of college cost transparency, Manthi said her biggest outstanding concern is that many prospective students may not understand that private nonprofit institutions, even highly selective ones, could be financially within reach. She said she’d be paying significantly more to attend the Illinois public institution to which she was also accepted, for example.

High sticker prices that are often deeply discounted are another part of the cost transparency conversation, with some experts warning that this practice is sowing further distrust in higher education. Institutions are expensive to run, and college pricing is complex, but leaders may not recognize the extent of the public dissatisfaction of this practice, at least concerning their campus: According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers with Hanover Research, 88 percent agreed that their own institution is transparent about the full, net cost of attendance, but just 42 percent said the same of colleges and universities as a whole.

Most CBOs also agreed their institution is sufficiently affordable. Yet more than half were at least moderately concerned about the sustainability of their institution’s tuition discount rate, with private nonprofit college and university CBOs especially concerned. About the same share were concerned about sticker price increases. And some 65 percent of all CBOs said their institution had increased institutional financial aid/grants in the last year to address affordability concerns.

One notable exception to the high-price, high-discount trend is Whitworth College, which is in the middle of a tuition reset.

“What I do wish students knew is, don’t write off the private institutions just because of the high sticker cost, because that’s what I did to start,” Manthi said. “It was just so ingrained that those places weren’t for us, or it didn’t feel like it was accessible.”