Undergraduate financial aid is calculated based on parental income, with no regard for whether the parents are willing to pay.
It doesn’t seem quite fair. People are legally emancipated from their parents at age 18, and younger in some instances. Parents are not expected to provide food and clothing to an 1-year-old, so why should they be expected to provide college tuition?
And yet, if parents were not considered to be the primary source of funds, most parents would not pay. After all, if they didn’t pay, then the child would receive more financial aid. Right now, a undergraduate student under the age of 24 is considered to be independent for financial aid purposes in very limited circumstances: getting married; being an orphan or ward of the state; having legal dependents of one’s own. One reason that the requirements are so strict is that too many wealthy parents took advantage of them.
You can try; people do. The FAFSA asks if the applicant has been emancipated. Answering yes does not mean the student will be considered to be independent. The student will then have to provide the school copies of the paperwork from the courts. And then the campus financial aid office will consider if it was legitimate or if it was a dodge around payment.
It’s frustrating for students whose parents won’t pay because tuition prices are so high. It’s difficult to work your way through college these days, and financial aid is based on the parents’ income. I’ve had many students who are paying their own tuition who complain that they can’t get a break, and I understand that. Their parents make too much money for them to receive financial aid, but they have limited personal resources to foot the bill.
Ultimately, the dam has to break in higher education pricing, and there are already signs that this is happening. Even if they are willing to pay, too many parents have been hurt by the market crash, the recession, and higher-education price increases that outstrip inflation. However, it is unlikely that the assumed parental responsibility for tuition will ever go away
