The Price of Access: How Marginalized Students Navigate Racialized Barriers in Financial Aid Processes

• In Event: Navigating Transitions: Equity, Belonging, and the First-Year Experience

Abstract

This study examines how financial aid systems are racialized and shape access to aid for low-income, first-generation students—many of whom are Latinx—across California’s public colleges. Using Racialized Administrative Burden theory and the Community Cultural Wealth framework, I analyze 76 semi-structured interviews. Preliminary findings show that racialized burdens—encompassing learning, compliance, and psychological costs—diminish students' agency to aid while perpetuating unequal distribution of resources through proximity to Whiteness. Despite these obstacles, students utilize navigational, familial, linguistic, and social capital to navigate and persist through financial aid processes. By centering on student experiences, this study sheds light on how financial aid policies serve as structural gatekeeping mechanisms and provides student-led insights for reimagining equity-driven reforms within financial aid systems.

Author

• Jaime Ramirez-Mendoza, University of California - Davis