A Study on Impact of Financial Stress on Students’ Academics

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the cost of attending colleges in India have been rising steadily and students who enrol for various courses are forced to ?rely on some form of financial aid to finance their cost of tuition fees. The main forms of financial aids available are grants and loans that can be sourced through government or financial institutions. The main difference between the two sources is grants need not be repaid, whereas loans need to be. For families and students, it is more important for to pass/complete school and college in the same year, otherwise it increases the financial burden of the family. The students who are vulnerable to financial stress were found to earn lower grades and fewer credit hours. The students who experienced such interruption in academics have to consider reducing their course loads or dropping for a semester due to financial issues/concerns and reported higher stress from their personal finances. Students who perceived that worrying about money/ academic funding affected their academic performance were found to have poorer academic performances. In this study, the data was collected from samples by a set of research tools and analyzed using SPSS, and resulted in research findings and interpretations. The sampling technique used in this study is non-probability sampling. Convenient sampling was used to select the respondent from the samples. Accordingly, the sample size is 100 college students which were chosen by random sampling and further responses were analysed and interpreted.