Caught in the Middle: Navigating Enrollment Pressures, Compliance, and Affordability

Speaker: Justin Draeger, Senior Vice President, Affordability Strada Education Foundation

When it comes to college affordability, financial aid staff are often stuck in between several competing pressures. They’re asked to be the “closers” at the end of the enrollment cycle, showing students how to make the numbers work while also carrying the institution’s compliance, ethics, and truth-telling responsibilities. Students and families, meanwhile, rely on them to make sense of what is genuinely affordable.

This session tackles those tensions head-on. We’ll share early research on what students and families say they want in price clarity and transparency, and introduce a set of field-developed guiding principles designed to help financial aid administrators and enrollment leaders navigate these increasingly tricky waters with greater confidence and clarity.

As Strada’s senior vice president, affordability, Justin Draeger focuses on connecting individuals to opportunity by making postsecondary education more affordable and accessible. He works to restore trust in higher education by improving price transparency, simplifying financial aid, and promoting efficiencies that lower costs. Draeger champions innovative cost-sharing models that close funding gaps for disadvantaged students, prioritizes need-based aid, and emphasizes fair measures of student and family need, ensuring every student can meaningfully contribute to their education. Draeger joined Strada in 2024 after spending more than 14 years as president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

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