The National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) operates the U.S. Department of Education's technical assistance and information center for the federal Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) Program. NCHE is based at The SERVE Center at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). NCHE hosts this Homeless Education Mailing List to share information and resources with educators, service providers, and other interested stakeholders about meeting the educational needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness. The ideas on this listserv do not necessarily reflect the views of NCHE, The SERVE Center, UNCG, or the U.S. Department of Education. ALL LOBBYING ACTIVITIES ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. |
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Unaccompanied Homeless Youth FAFSA Data
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Greetings colleagues:
The U.S. Department of Education recently released FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) data, including state-level numbers, for unaccompanied homeless youth (UHY) for the 2013-2014, 2014-2015, and 2015-2016 FAFSA years. This data is helpful in understanding more about UHY who have accessed federal student aid for college as independent students. While this data is useful and informative, it is important to understand what the data does and does not represent. In the interest of brevity, NCHE provides highlights below, but strongly recommends reading the entirety of the clarifying information provided by the U.S. Department of Education on page 1 of the data report, which is available for downloading at https://nche.ed.gov/downloads/he/homeless-fafsa.docx.
Clarifying Points about the Data
The data represents a subset of unaccompanied homeless youth who accessed federal student aid as independent students. It does not represent the total number of homeless youth attending college in the United States.
Subset: Because of the way the FAFSA uses skip logic to identify students in various independent student categories, the UHY FAFSA data only includes youth who answered "no" to all previous independent student status questions and "yes" to one of the UHY questions. Once an applicant provides a positive response on the FAFSA on the Web for any of the questions regarding independent status, most of the additional questions, including those for homelessness, are not shown. See the screen shot at https://nche.ed.gov/downloads/he/fafsa-image.png. For more information on dependency status, visit https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/fafsa/filling-out/dependency.
Unaccompanied: The data represents homeless youth who were unaccompanied (experiencing homelessness on their own). The data does not include youth experiencing homelessness with their family.
Who accessed federal student aid as independent students as UHY: The data does not include UHY who did not complete the FAFSA; UHY who, for whatever the reason, did not respond affirmatively to the UHY questions on the FAFSA; or youth whose requests for independent student status as an UHY remained "undetermined".
What is Independent Student Status?
UHY qualify as independent students for purposes of applying for federal student aid for college. This means that they do not need to report their parents’ financial and other information on the FAFSA. This support is critical in helping UHY access the financial support they need to pay for college.
For more information on independent student status for UHY, visit https://nche.ed.gov/ibt/higher_ed.php, or register for NCHE's upcoming
Paving the Way to College for Students Experiencing Homelessness webinar on Tuesday, February 28, at https://nche.ed.gov/web/group.php.
Feel free to reach out should you have additional questions about this data. NCHE will share similar FAFSA data for students who are in foster care later this week.
Best regards,
Christina Dukes, Federal Liaison
National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) |
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National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) | http://nche.ed.gov
Operating the U.S. Department of Education's technical assistance center for the federal Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) Program |
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