The data release comes as the president prepares to focus on college costs. Majority of students get college aid

Students and families are more willing than ever to borrow to pay for college and increasingly reliant on federal grants and loans to help with tuition bills, statistics released today from the U.S. Education Department show.

For the first time, a majority of undergraduates are receiving some kind of federal financial aid — 57 percent. A higher proportion than ever are taking out loans. But while the federal government gave out more grants for low-income students, colleges continued using their own money on grants for students from wealthier families. That’s a trend that concerns some who argue that colleges should do more to help students of limited means.


The Education Department releases a snapshot every four years of how students are paying for college. The 2011-12 data, from a sample of nearly 100,000 undergraduate students, are the first to deal mainly with students who enrolled in college after the economic downturn began.

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The data release comes days before President Barack Obama starts a bus tour to talk about holding down college costs.

“Federal grants and loans help students realize the American dream, opening the door to opportunity for students who would never be able to get a college education without financial support,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement on the findings, later continuing: “But the data also shows that increasing federal student aid alone will not control the cost of college. All of us share responsibility for ensuring that college is affordable.”

The proportion of students relying on federal financial aid has been growing steadily for years, said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

“By definition, a lot has changed in four years, and that’s going to be reflected in these numbers,” Buckley said in a call with reporters Monday.

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Among those changes: Growing student debt even as grant programs expanded for poor students.

About 41 percent of all undergraduates took out loans, up from 35 percent four years ago. Borrowing is on the rise even in top income brackets. About 46 percent of students with families making more than $100,000 per year took out student loans, and a majority of students from families making $80,000 or less borrowed to pay for college.

The numbers also show the effect of skyrocketing spending on the Pell Grant. About 41 percent of all students received the grant in 2011-12, a 14 percentage point increase. Congress expanded the grant program several times between 2007 and 2009. As the economy faltered and incomes fell, spending on Pell grew from $12.8 billion in 2007 to $35.6 billion in 2011 before falling slightly last year.

Students at for-profit colleges were especially reliant on federal financial aid programs. More than three-quarters of students at for-profit colleges granting associate or bachelor’s degrees received federal student aid. And an additional 10 percent of students at for-profit colleges granting bachelor’s degrees received veterans’ benefits — a higher proportion than at public or private nonprofit colleges.

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The data also show that colleges continue to give plenty of money to students from middle- and upper-income families.

About 39 percent of students from families making less than $20,000 per year received grants from colleges’ own funds. But so did 38 percent of students from families with incomes of more than $100,000, up from 33 percent four years ago. The average grants were higher for the wealthiest students, who averaged $10,200 in college aid, than for the poorest, who got about $8,000.

Recent studies have found colleges are now as likely to give grants based on need as they are to give grants based on other factors — such as scholarship money that can be used to attract students who are academically or athletically talented.

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“When you look at their distribution by income, you see that they’re giving a lot of dollars away to people at the top of the income distribution that probably just don’t need it as much as people at the lower end,” said Ben Miller, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation.