Artificial intelligence and access to financial aid for minority college students: evaluating chatbots and Spanish-language financial aid information

A considerable research gap exists regarding how institutions of higher education use artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, with no work addressing whether chatbots serve a growing minority group in the U.S.: people who are L1 Spanish speakers seeking financial aid information in the form of chatbot responses in Spanish or Spanish-programmed chatbots. This study randomly sampled 331 institutions of higher education to learn if these institutions embed chatbots on their financial aid websites and if these chatbots have been programmed to speak Spanish. Major findings include that only 21.8% of the institutions (n = 72) embed chatbots into their financial aid websites and only 25.0% of those chatbots (n=18) were programmed to provide Spanish-language financial aid information, representing only 5.4% of the overall 331 institution samples. Implications for college access and equity for English learners and L1 Spanish speakers – in addition to research and policy concerns – are addressed.