Mentoring Matters: A Case for Implementing a Financial Aid Literacy Programs on Your Campus

• In Event: Critical Musings in Higher Education: Mentors Matter for Black Lives

Abstract

Neoliberalism has changed the way education functions in the Black community and repositioned education as a good for the individual and less about the well-being of the collective. Black people are the number one consumers in American society and we currently treat education in the same way; if you get a credit card, purchase a home or buy a car you can file bankruptcy and find relief. Given what we know about student’s debt and the racial and gender pay gap, we must engage critically in the discussion around the cost of higher education, particularly where it concerns Black women (Crenshaw, 1991; Elliott, 2015; Goldrick-Rab, 2014; Gross, 2019; Houle, 2014). As a Black woman with over 10 years of experience in admissions, far too many Black students enter college with very little knowledge around financing higher education. In her powerful book, Black Feminism in Qualitative Inquiry: A Mosaic for Writing Our Daughter’s Body, Evans-Winters (2019) reaffirmed my decision to start a mentoring organization to support girls from 9th grade through undergrad as they pursed higher education. I saw myself in these students as the first person in my family to attend college, I too lacked knowledge on how to navigate the financial aid system. Black students tend to focused on gaining access or “getting in” to an institution; however, affordability poses a more significant threat to quality of life post-graduation. Through the commodification of higher education, a college degree with limited opportunities for a better life amounts to no more than degrees being a status symbol and no longer a bargaining chip that can be used to negotiate ones’ individual/collective interest (Jackson, 2013; Ratcliffe, 2013; Stovall, 2009). It is my hope that as we partake in the education process we must do so with a greater understanding. This presentation is bigger than a discussion about mentoring, this presentation seeks to show how debt and neoliberalism have closed education as an access point to full citizenship and the people most negatively impacted are Black women and their families (Crenshaw, 1991). This presentation is about using Mazama’s (2001) afrocentricity as a paradigm to better equip our students when making financial decisions that have life-long implications. Celebrate your daughter, god-daughter, niece, or little cousin’s high school graduation; be joyful when they announce to you where they plan to attend college, but also make sure they don’t lose focus of the hidden cost of higher education. The purpose of this presentation is to 1.) educate attendees about social impact of student debt on Black students, particularly Black women and girls, 2.) provide a mentoring template that can be used to educate Black students and families, and 3.) embolden family members, educators, mentors, and administrators to implement a financial aid literacy program into their student support services for Black students. This presentation draws from neoliberalism and intersectionality to set the stage for how student debt impacts Black women and their families.

Author

• Tiffany S Bumpers, University of Illinois at Chicago