Advocates for students say a set of changes to the federal financial aid process for which they've long advocated will help many thousands of families who need federal aid to pay for college.
But those changes -- automatically populating the Free Application for Federal Student Aid with family income data already filed for tax purposes and releasing the application months earlier -- are causing uncertainty for both colleges and the advising professionals who work with students. Those concerns have focused most prominently on whether colleges will move up their financial aid deadlines in order to get award notifications to students sooner, a Department of Education priority.
In years past, high school seniors applying for federal student aid would have to estimate their family’s income information for the previous year. That can be a challenge even when applying close to the March deadline because many families don’t have their taxes completed until tax day in mid-April.
For low-income students, especially, that made the process more onerous and frequently led to burdensome verification checks of family incomes. The Education Department believes the use of the latest tax information filed with the Internal Revenue Service by a student’s family, combined with a new Oct. 1 release date of the FAFSA, will make the application process easier for low- and middle-income students who need federal aid to pay for college.
Higher education groups see the FAFSA changes this application cycle as a starting point for further simplification of the financial aid process down the road.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/11/financial-aid-application-simpler-and-available-earlier-no-panacea