The Board of Governors fee waiver, financial aid, and community college student success

Abstract

California established the Board of Governors (BOG) fee waiver in 1984 to maintain educational access after the implementation of the state's first ever unit-based fees for community college attendance. Although it was not designed as an incentive to stimulate higher levels of academic achievement or student success, recent accountability policy enactments have ascribed this purpose to the BOG fee waiver. An example is the Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act of 2012, which established the first-ever academic satisfactory progress requirements for BOG fee waiver recipients. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among students' financial aid awards, including the BOG fee waiver, and measures of success for students who were attending Rio Hondo College. Findings showed that students who had the greatest financial need—and therefore the highest financial aid awards—had lower cumulative grade point averages and completed a smaller percentage of units attempted. While the study was unable to control for students' prior academic achievement, it appears that financial aid awards were not sufficient to fully counteract the negative effects of students' need, thus calling to question some of the efficacy of adding academic performance requirements to financial aid awards such as the BOG fee waiver. The paper concludes with a discussion of findings and recommendations for policy, practice, and future research.