Several dozen congressional lawmakers on Thursday urged the Obama administration to use its existing authority to allow students to apply for federal financial aid based on their family’s income from two years earlier instead of the immediately previous year.
In a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, 51 Democrats and 2 Republicans said the Education Department should switch the aid application to what is known as "prior-prior year" tax information.
Requiring students to provide tax information for the prior year has created a "highly disjoined process timeline" that especially harms low-income and first-generation students, the lawmakers said. The problem is that many colleges require students to apply for federal aid before they are able to file their taxes for the previous year.
"We do not need to wait to provide students and families much-needed relief," the letter says. "The Department can and should improve the process of filling out the FAFSA right now."
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/05/lawmakers-fafsa-should-use-prior-prior-year-data