Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for The Hechinger Report, Andy Johnston explains how the overcomplicated vocabulary and terminology used in higher education is often an overlooked barrier for many students.

· How can we encourage higher education to create resources with students in mind?

· Here's more on how bureaucratic barriers prevent student success.

Leslie De Santos furrowed her brow as she read the passage.

The four sentences contained terms such as “litigation,” “adjudicative,” “jurisdiction” and “identifiers,” and the last sentence, 23 words long, included two semicolons.

It wasn’t an assignment from an advanced course in legal studies. The passage was from the free application for federal student aid, otherwise known as FAFSA, an integral — and often hated — part of the lives of high school seniors who aspire to college.

Cluttered with confusing terminology, it and other densely worded documents are a surprisingly significant barrier to students — especially students who don’t have college counselors to help them or parents with higher educations.

Read the full article about college lingo by Andy Johnston at The Hechinger Report.