Ever since the pandemic started in March 2020, every aspect of our lives has been affected. Businesses were forced to work remotely, entire industries like hospitality came to a halt and economies around the world suffered. But there is one more aspect of our lives that changed quite a bit – college education.
A Turn for the Worse
When you account for tuition fees and all the extra costs associated with a single year of college, the price that most families will have to pay per year turns out close to $70,000. The numbers differ depending on whether the college is private or a state public one.
Looking at figures from recent years, it’s clear that each year sees a new increase in tuition fees. While the latest growth in 2020 was not as bad as the previous years, when you combine that growth with a massive loss of jobs and economic instability, things are not looking good.
The actual costs per family
Even though the annual costs of college per single student can go up to $70k, the average family doesn’t pay anywhere near that amount for college. How so?
It turns out that very few families pay the whole amount in full. On average, only one third of the sum is paid through family savings and funds. The remainder – scholarships and funds.
Here is the interesting part – only half of the families surveyed actually use scholarships to get help with paying for college education. When asked why they didn’t use them as a source of funding, they just replied that they hadn’t even applied for them.
The lessons learned
There are two major lessons to be learned here. One, a college education is expensive and it’s only bound to get more expensive. Two, scholarships are an excellent way to help lift some of the burden off families who are in debt.
The major challenge here is actually not providing the money – since there are ample scholarships available. According to research, the average amount a student can win per scholarship is between $5,000 and $10,000. And if you take one glance at the ScholarshipOwl website, you’ll notice hundreds of scholarships being posted at any point in time.
The biggest challenge then? Promoting scholarships to a wider audience.
How you can help
As a business owner, there are two things you can do. The first is to actively encourage your own community to apply for as many scholarships as possible, ideally using a platform such as ScholarshipOwl. There are plenty of opportunities out there, regardless of where you’re from and what kind of college you want to go to.
At the same time, you should go ahead and create a scholarship of your own. It’s so easy that anyone can do it in as little as 15 minutes. After your scholarship goes live, all you have to do is promote it within your channels.
If you want to create your own scholarship today – reach out to us and we’ll help you get started – completely free!
That way, you get the best of both worlds – you’ll get to promote your brand while helping out a student in need and uncovering a new channel for them and their college fund.
