FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
FAFSA Delays-Navigating the Thorny Landscape of College Unaffordability
For many low-income college students, the prevailing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays are causing added panic to our ever-growing educational crisis of soaring college costs. IWPR's Policy Team weighs in.
This year marked the second consecutive year the gender gap in earnings worsened, increasing from 17.3 percent in 2023 to 19.1 percent* in 2024. In 2024, women earned only 80.9 cents for every dollar earned by men—the lowest gender earnings ratio since 2016, when women earned 80.5 cents to the dollar compared to men. Equal Pay Days across this past year have highlighted how the problem of wage equity is worse for the intersecting identities of women of color, mothers, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and disabled women. On April 7, we recognized Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Women’s Equal Pay Day. In 2023, AANHPI [...]
November 20 marks Women in Apprenticeship Day, a day chosen by the National Taskforce on Tradeswomen’s Issues to highlight the role apprenticeships play in improving women’s access to—and advancement in—good jobs in the construction trades. Apprenticeships offer an earn-as-you-learn pathway to industry-recognized certifications, combining paid work and on-the-job training with classroom instruction, and typically require a minimum of two years of full-time work. Not all apprenticeships lead to equally highly paid careers. In FY 2025, the median hourly pay [...]
November 8 marks National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Day—an opportunity to celebrate and inspire students to pursue STEM education and careers. In recent decades, STEM professionals have created countless groundbreaking innovations, and employment in STEM careers has grown exponentially. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment in STEM jobs is projected to continue to grow at more than twice the rate of overall employment over the next 10 years. Despite this, women account for only 26.6 percent of the STEM workforce, according to IWPR’s State Policy Action Lab (State PAL). Moreover, IWPR’s analysis of the 2023 American Community Survey finds that women in the STEM workforce make just 80 cents for [...]
October is LGBTQIA+ History Month—a designated month-long tribute to recognize, acknowledge, and share the history of the ongoing battle for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual, and asexual people. In the first and second blogs of this series, we explored the exhausting effects of workplace inequities, the extremely limited federal data collection efforts, and the profound economic disparities within the LGBTQIA+ community. For the third and final blog, we’re examining the higher rates of poor mental health, mental [...]
October 23 marks the second annual Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day—a day to call attention to one of the largest wage gaps women workers face. According to analysis from the National Women’s Law Center, disabled women earn just 56 percent of what's paid to nondisabled men for all workers, inclusive of part-time and seasonal workers. Even when comparing workers facing similar discrimination, disabled women only earn 81 percent of what disabled men earn when working full-time year-round, demonstrating how both [...]
Education has long been hailed as the “great equalizer,” but legislation etched into law this summer threatens this cornerstone of economic mobility, particularly for women of color pursuing higher education. In early July, the president signed the Republican-led budget reconciliation legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB). The OBBB has devastating impacts on higher education, and therefore, women’s economic mobility. Due to the bill’s cuts to critical funding for federal student aid and new limitations on borrowing, the [...]
