Student Financial Aid
There is almost a steady growth in every category, except work study, which stays around 3 million. It is obvious student loans have always had the highest amount in dollars of the categories, starting around 8 million in 1994, tripling between 2004 and 2005, and landing right above 90 million for 2017. The amount in grants given stays higher than the amount given in scholarships until 2013 when the amount of grants drops over 20 million dollars.
There does not seem to be any correlation between each categories increases and decreases. Loans continue to have the highest amount and this could very likely have to do with the factors such as 1) this type of aid is the only one that can be used
on finances other than A-State tuition/ A-State room and board, and 2) the cost of living rising each year (in both on campus and off campus housing).
This bump chart contains the same information as the scatter plot above, but portrays it in a different way where you can visually see the large differences in the amount between the categories verses numbers used in the scatter plot.
Below is a chart showing A-State tuition rates every five years from 1986 to 2016. (Factbooks only contain aid information from 1986 forward, and no other information was made available.) Tuition rates have steadily risen, the biggest jump being between 2001 and 2006 when tuition rose by $2,550.00. By looking at both charts, it seems as tuition rises so do the number of student loans taken out, and the number of scholarships awarded.
| year | resident | non-resident |
| 1986 | $882.00 | $2,082.00 |
| 1991 | $1,410.00 | $2,660.00 |
| 1996 | $1,930.00 | $3,620.00 |
| 2001 | $3,160.00 | $7,096.00 |
| 2006 | $5,710.00 | $12,760.00 |
| 2011 | $6,934.00 | $14,860.00 |
| 2016 | $8,200.00 | $14,260.00 |
[1]U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2018). The Condition of Education 2018 (NCES 2018-144),Sources of Financial Aid.
