Dan Madzelan, Acting Assistant Secretary for Post-Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education, presented on the topic of FAFSA simplification.
The Department of Education has announced ways to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. According to Dan, the revised 2010-2011 FAFSA will streamline the application process by dramatically reducing the number of questions to be completed by the applicant.
This will be accomplished in two ways …
1. By using skip logic within the online application form, presumably allowing the student to only answer questions pertinent to his or her situation. (i.e., date of birth will determine age eligibility for independent status)
2. By implementing the option for electronic retrieval of tax data from the IRS to populate the appropriate FAFSA fields. Unfortunately, 2010-2011 applicants will not have access to their IRS data until July 1, 2010. (Well beyond the time that schools require the FAFSA data for the 2010-11 academic year.)
Further FAFSA simplification will require new legislation, but has attracted support from Congress and the general public however; it has many financial aid officers concerned. Implementing the IRS data retrieval would increase interest in requiring “prior-prior” year tax information (rather than waiting until prior year taxes are completed and processed). Also, elimination of asset and income questions not currently on the IRS forms could impact the expected contribution for students and parents.
Dan told our audience that the primary use of the FAFSA will be to gather eligibility criteria for both Pell grants and the subsidized student loans. The goal of these proposals is to encourage more applicants on the undergraduate level. Graduate/professional schools may still desire supplemental data if this legislation is passed.
There are a number of resources online regarding this topic … the question and answer section on the NASFAA site is particularly helpful.
Posted by: Sue Ledwell
Comments