Today's Bangor Daily News has an excellent editorial about the Obama administrations efforts to simply the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form. Some changes will be immediate, while others will be phased in over the next several years. Rather than wait weeks, students will now be able to see estimates of Pell Grant and other student loan eligibility immediately. The number of questions will be reduced by about 20% to 150 and starting in January, for students who choose, they will be able to import relevant tax information from the IRS.
We encourage you to read the entire editorial and to learn from the Department of Education.
“Confusing paperwork shouldn’t stand between qualified students and a college degree,” said Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. A law passed last year helped, creating a two-page form for some low-income families.
We encourage you to read the entire editorial and to learn from the Department of Education.
This changes are long overdue and moving us in the right direction. Now if we could just release the bottleneck of information at the high school level where only one counselor may be available for 400-600 students. Children from families in which they are the first to attend college are particularly affected by the lack of timely information on the financial aid and college application procedures. We were on to something under the old Carl Perkins Act, Tech-Prep program that made it possible for all teachers at the high school, not just the counselor, to help advise students and their families. Most of those programs folded when the funds ran out.