For students (and their parents) seeking to pay for college to begin or further their educational journeys, 2025 will present far more financial hurdles than in past years.
This begs the question: How will these students and their parents raise the necessary funding? What strategies are being deployed by students (and their parents) who plan to be college freshmen in Fall 2025?
Financial hurdles
Here are some sobering realities per Inside Higher Education regarding various Trump administration education policies with which higher education seekers must contend:
- The maximum Pell Grant award would be reduced by $1,685, dropping from $7,395 to $5,710 for the 2026-27 academic year. This would be the first cut to the maximum Pell Grant since 1993. The administration claims the cut is necessary due to a projected Pell Grant shortfall, but critics argue it would negatively impact low-income students.
- Federal Work-Study: Funding for the Federal Work-Study program would be cut by roughly 80%. The proposal also shifts the responsibility for paying more student wages to colleges and universities.
- Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOG): The FSEOG program would be eliminated, resulting in a loss of $910 million in funding.
- TRIO and GEAR UP: Funding for the TRIO and GEAR UP programs would be eliminated. These programs support disadvantaged students in progressing from middle school through college.
Strategies to secure funding
Kam Thomas has one daughter who will be a sophomore at Spellman this fall and another daughter who will graduate from high school at the end of the 2025-26 school year. Thomas shared seven words of her strategy for financing their education: “A prayer. Financial Aid. Out of pocket.”
Thomas’s first two words (“A prayer”) are a common response from those trying to financially position themselves to pay for college. This is especially true when recognizing that the average annual cost of college in the US is approximately $35,720 per student (tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses). Education Data Initiative reports that this amount has significantly increased over the past 10-20 years, with some sources indicating a tripling in cost over the last two decades.
Nicque Montgomery-Swinton, whose son Jackson Swinton will be a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin this fall, has been fortunate in her ability to cover her son’s college costs.
“We’re using a mix of resources to cover college for my son,” said Montgomery-Swinton. “The UT Promise Plus program covers full tuition and fees since our family qualifies under their income cap. He also received a federal grant, a few scholarships, and additional support through Texas Work Source’s vocational rehabilitation (VR) program due to his learning disability.
“We’re grateful, because piecing all of it together made for 100% covered,” she said.
ReShonda Tate has a son, Myles Billingsley, who will be starting his college journey this fall at Morehouse. Tate shared both her desired funding strategy and her actual one.
“So, I would love to say I’m going to use his savings that we’ve been saving since Myles was two years old. In an ideal world, that’s what I would be using,” said Tate, an award-winning author and Managing Editor of the Defender. “But in the world where I had two daughters complete college before him, there is no college fund. So, we’re using parent plus loans and scholarships to pay.”
2025 challenges
Even though Thomas, Montgomery-Swinton, Tate and others are finding a way, many are not, or have yet to figure out how to clear the hurdles before them. Even Montgomery-Swinton and Tate have felt the weight of educational policy changes.
“The constant changes to federal aid guidelines and delays in funding approvals have added a lot of stress,” said Montgomery-Swinton. “The uncertainty is ever-present, and it makes planning very difficult.
“We’ve learned to stay proactive—calling financial aid offices, asking for updates and leaning on community-based resources to fill in the gaps.”
One of those current White House administration policy changes served as a cause of great concern for Tate.
“I actually just discovered that by taking any government money, Parent Plus loans, by registering with FAFSA, you are registering your son with the Selective Service,” stated Tate. “You’ve got to read the fine print, which of course I didn’t. Most people don’t.
“But when you take that FAFSA money, you are basically saying, ‘Here’s my son, if you ever have a draft.’ So, there’s a big challenge with that. Our children will be the first people that they call.”
She had to take it because Tate needs the funds for Myles’s college costs. But she plans on doing something different moving forward.
“I’m starting now to continue to get scholarships so that next year I won’t have to use a loan again,” added Tate, who includes scholarship searches as part of her advice to other college-bound students and parents.
Advice
“There are so many scholarships out there. I think what happens is a lot of people see $500 here or $1,000 there, and they don’t apply for them,” said Tate. “My sister’s sorority held a big scholarship event recently. Only about 50% of the people even applied. So, they went out searching for people to apply for these scholarships. There were thousands of dollars that nobody even applied for.
“The Defender did a story once on a young girl who paid for her entire Howard University education with those $500 scholarships.”
Tate and Montgomery-Swinton agreed that the most important strategy, however, is to start organizing finances for college early.
“Start early, be organized, attend scholarship workshops, and don’t try to figure it out alone,” said Montgomery-Swinton. “Sometimes it’s worth it to invest in a college consultant or a scholarship professional who knows where the money is and how to get it.”
Montgomery-Swinton found programs like UT’s Promise Plus, the Texas Workforce Commission’s Youth Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Services (twc.texas.gov) and even the Astros Youth Academy’s monthly scholarship emails (astrosyouthacademy.com) helpful.
“You just have to be willing to research, ask, and apply,” she added.
And starting early involves more than scholarship searches.
“If your kid is in the ninth or 10th grade and you know you’re going to need that money to pay for college, start working on your credit,” shared Tate. “I’m in a college parent group, and it’s breaking my heart. I wish that I was a millionaire as I’m watching all these parents saying, ‘I’m gonna have to have the conversation with my kid today that she can’t go to college because I can’t afford to pay for it outright, and I got declined for a loan.’ Because you still have to have decent credit with a Parent Plus Loan. You don’t have to have great credit, but you can’t be in default.
“So, around that sophomore year, if you know you’re gonna need a government loan, start working on your credit just so that you’ll be able to be approved.”
