Obama Administration To Simplify Complex College Aid Application

jai, if you proof read the form before hitting submit, much like you'd have to proof read your final papers before turning them in, you'd be paying more attentoin to detail, thus making sure you completed everything correctly.

practice. learning. not spoon-feeding.

What about people like myself who have been on their own since the age of 18? People who have to work 4 jobs and can't afford to further their education so they get stuck in the same rut over and over again? When are we going to try and strengthen the youth who want to go to school and further their education? I have several friends/relatives who get full rides because they have children and are single mothers, Yay for them, but what about the traditional student? No children, just trying to get an education? Why in God's earth should I have to use my parents' tax information when I have been out of their home for 4 years?

As someone who works with this form everyday I am all for simplicity. I work as a financial aid administrator and you would not believe the mistakes, frustrations,etc... that students have with this form. Also, what alot of people don't realize is that when students make a mistake or don't include all their information,then they are selected for a process called verification. When we have to verify we are given authority to pull whatever information we need in order to complete your pell file. So, if we need to, we pull taxes, child support payments, etc... to make sure that you answered in truth on this application. When this process occurs it delays the pell award even longer.
Also, everyone is not good with computers and this form can be intimidating. You have alot of older people who are going back to school and are not as quick with everything.
Yes, our country is dealing with alot lately, but you cannot short change the worth of a great education and the future that it lead you to.

Danita, you wrote, "Simplifying bureaucratic government forms and red tape - what a sinister left wing plot!" So if the former president, your favorite, George Bush, had proposed a change in the FAFSA application system that required the IRS to share private citizens' tax information with another government agency as a matter of course, you would not have been concerned?

The form is relatively simple, but necessarily asks a lot of questions in order to make a reasonably accurate assessment of your financial situation in order to determine financial aid eligibility. It currently remembers information you filled in from the previous year, so once you have done it once, the amount of work involved goes down considerably. However, I am more comfortable inputting my own tax and income information than having the IRS provide it, and would much prefer the firewall between the IRS and other government entities remain in place for safety and privacy reasons.

Simplifying bureaucratic government forms and red tape - what a sinister left wing plot!

danita ,

Have you ever filled it out? It is NOT that complex at all. AND given the fact that if you us a computer (since you want to save paper, be green, etc...) the system retains all the old data from the previous year. You only have to modify things that have changed.

As I said, I think it would be better if they accounted more for your debt situation rather than the large focus being only on assests.

Unless your going to add that to the form, I see no reason to change something that is in place and works!

We have far too many issues the really DO need the focus and the energy of the govt. This is NOT one of them!

JoAnn, thanks for saying something with which I wholeheartedly agree-- the FAFSA was not that complicated in the first place. I am a college professor and I have filled out FAFSA forms for years while my children went through college (and it was annoying since we knew we would not qualify for financial aid, but both children were required to fill out FAFSA anyway because of their merit scholarships-- don't ask me). They are indeed time-consuming but not complicated. If you can't fill out a FAFSA, or gave up in frustration and didn't go to college because it was too difficult, then I dread the thought of dealing with you in my classroom anyway.

Oh, but the other shoe has dropped. One way they intend to "simplify" things is to share IRS tax form data. The IRS commissioner said that basically the FAFSA would have a "do you want to go get your IRS data" button-- sounds sorta like what TurboTax does to fill in info from your Quickbooks records when you use it to do your taxes. I am not terribly comfortable with direct access to the IRS info, although I guess if there's an opt-in rather than an opt-out , that is marginally better. BUT it is a slippery slope-- giving IRS info to other departments of the federal government-- that I'd prefer to avoid.

It really doesn't matter what the Obama administration does, it will be wrong to some posters on here.

Simplifying bureaucratic government forms and red tape - what a sinister left wing plot!

With all the things we are being told we "HAVE TO DO NOW", this is one that...

A. DOES NOT EVEN NEED TO BE DONE.

B. WOULD COST MORE TO IMPLEMENT & DEAL WITH THE CHANGES THAN ANY SAVINGS ANYONE CAN "CLAIM" WOULD OCCUR.

The info on the form is the fundamental data required to determine aid. It does not however take into account your debt situation. Only your assests.

If any changes were to occur, I would recommend that more data on your debt be included.

Simplifying bureaucratic government forms and red tape - what a sinister left wing plot!

I do not remember the FAFSA form to be “difficult”; I remember it to be time consuming if anything. However, I can easily justify spending 10-20mins filling out a form that will grant me 10’s of thousands’ of dollars for my education. In what ways are they planning on simplifying the questions? If one finds answering 150 questions to be too difficult, then typical college work load of reading 100+ pages a night will undoubtedly pose as a “problem” to these potential students. Likewise, if people cannot figure out how to fill out an online form, how can we trust the same people to figure out how to pay back their loans on time? Aren’t we as a country in enough debt? Attending college is a test of your stamina, time management skills, as well as a finical responsibility. While I agree that college level education should be available for those who are interested; I do not believe that simplifying the FAFSA form will fix any problem. The problem lies within pre-college education. Invest in High School courses geared towards educating students on how to fill out these forms, open a savings account, apply to fitting universities, etc. Infest in teaching young students the responsibility of post High School graduation, in whatever they may go on to achieve. Continuing an education may not be everyone’s cup ‘o tea; live and let live, but set the bar high enough for young adults to feel prepared to handle the difficulty that a 4 year college degree entails. Fix the real problem, because it’s rooted deeper than a 150 question tax bracket form.

Wow! While I'm all for making things easier if it can be done, you've got to be kidding me here, right? If you can't understand this form, quite frankly, you won't survive college! Sure, it's long, its tedious, but you know what - so is college sometimes! If you can't complete this form, then you should probably think about doing something else then going to college, as you will likely struggle, never graduate, and waste money (both public and private cash!).

"Too many students who qualify found applying for student loans was too difficult to understand,”

Are they kidding? They do mean for college, right?

The expansion of such a currency system would roughly match the holdings of those honor-bound citizens who are able to make more of a profit off of land than the corporate system can generate through overseas transactions, transportation and mining, maintaing a healthy balance of domestic land-use ratios to corporate activities throughout time.

Wouldn't a farmer(and I'm not a farmer) in a small area like to see at how much corn a woodsman would trade a cord of wood, and compare that to the dollar prices? How much of that value would he trade to get the taxable dollars back again, when his wife needs them to go to Wal-Mart?

The thing is, it would only take the wisdom of a few to launch. Even in a small area, if a bank could be enlisted to keep a record like a checking account, and a series of feed stores could be enlisted to receive and dispense, for a small transaction fee. That would possibly be enough to get the ball rolling.

But by then it will be too late to preserve the constitution.

The will when the time comes.

Well if you can figure out how to make the solar unit work you might be on to something that lots of green enthusiasts would go for. Feed corn is going to be a tough sell--most people don't see any intrinsic value in it.

A 'solar unit' is also difficult to quantify and transport.

There is more than one benefit to a base of feed-corn. It is fairly easily convertible to solar-units, fuel units, electrical units, food units (meat, fruit et al), labor units, and all those as both input and output. A 'solar unit', though it follows along the same lines, is difficult to define and subject to change.