Via Inside Higher Ed,
FAFSA, the Perfect, and the Good Quote:
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"This damn form was killing us," [Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan said to a small group of reporters after a more formal presentation Wednesday to the White House press corps about the Obama administration's plan to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. He was talking about how big a deterrent the federal form was to getting students from low-income families to apply to college...
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Among the proposals,
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January will also mark the start of the department's test of a system to allow students who apply for aid for the spring 2010 semester to retrieve relevant tax information from the Internal Revenue Service to help them complete the online FAFSA. "When you're online filling out the FAFSA, there'll be a button that says, 'Want to go get your IRS data?' " said Shulman of the IRS.
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Is this really wise. to open an avenue for hackers to access IRS data via FAFSA? In addition there is the,
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thorny question of whether to use year-old tax data -- which creates potential challenges for financial aid officers and students alike when families' financial fortunes change significantly.
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Other changes the department seeks would require Congressional approval. Department officials said they would ask Congress to eliminate a total of 29 questions about students' and families' finances that are not on the federal tax form. Several of those relate to families' assets ("As of today, what is the net worth of your (and spouse’s) investments, including real estate (not your home)?"), and eliminating the consideration of assets for most students by abandoning those questions would be among the more controversial steps the Obama plan calls for.
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Here's why this might not be such a good idea.
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...some college officials worry that states and colleges might stop using the FAFSA -- and require students to fill out other forms to apply for state or institutional aid -- if they no longer believe the federal form gives them sufficient information on which to base their decisions.
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This last point is quite significant as public universities may end up like the private schools that require FAFSA and profile or FAFSA and supplemental forms. The only reason they use FAFSA is to determine eligibility for federal aid. The simplification of FAFSA may just end up pushing the complexity down to the state and individual colleges.