"Undergraduate students at Virginia’s public universities who don’t get any help from their families to pay for school don’t always get the most money from state and university aid awards.

That’s according to a new report from JLARC, the state legislature’s research arm. These students accounted for about half of the $162 million in unmet financial need in the 2020-’21 school year after all federal, state and institutional aid awards were applied.

And even though Virginia lawmakers recently invested a large amount into the state’s financial aid programs, JLARC associate director Tracey Smith said it’s important to note that a large amount of unmet student need still exists.

'As you see tuition and fees and other costs of higher education increasing – even though that was a tremendous infusion of funding – it's likely that the trend is going to be that students need even more in years to come,' Smith said,'" reports VPM. 

Photo: Students walk through Virginia Commonwealth University's Monroe Park Campus. A recent state report found that less than half of state aid awarded at VCU during the 2020-'21 school year went to students with no or minimal ability to pay for school. (File photo: Crixell Matthew/VPM News)