Plenty of questions remain unanswered after the White Houseannounced Sunday a rejiggering of when and how students apply for federal financial aid.
Starting in 2016 for the 2017-18 academic year, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid will be available earlier, in October rather than January, and applicants will be able to use income information from two-year-old completed tax returns rather than sometimes incomplete information from the previous year.
In less than 24 hours, dozens of universities -- including the University of California system, the University of Texas at San Antonio and Loyola University Maryland -- committed to realigning their own institutional financial aid applications to use the "prior-prior year" data. And more university commitments are on the way, said the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), an organization that has pushed for this change for years.
Effects of the policy shift will be wide reaching, even for colleges that haven’t opted to change their financial aid applications. But until the government releases more specific information, many are stuck in a holding pattern.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/15/excitement-and-concern-about-prior-prior-year-fafsa-changes