The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing to discuss ways to simplify how students apply for federal financial aid, Campus Technology reported. The hearing comes as bipartisan negotiations over a rewrite of the Higher Education Act move ahead.
The panel has discussed the subject of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) simplification on numerous occasions over the past several years. Both HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) expressed their support for reforming the FAFSA process.
Kristina Scott, executive director at Alabama Possible; Michael Meotti, executive director at Washington Student Achievement Council; Mark Wiederspan, executive research officer at Iowa Student Aid; and Michele Scott Taylor, chief program officer at College Now Cleveland, testified during the hearing.
"FAFSA continues to be a barrier to post-secondary attainment. Most people get help filing their taxes from something like HR Block or using Turbo Tax," said Kristina Scott of Alabama Possible. "One of my questions is do we need to build a similar system for FAFSA completion or would our limited private resources be better spent supporting student success."
Mark Wiederspan of the Iowa Student Aid talked about how the verification process for FAFSA can be cumbersome, especially for low-income students. To make the process easier for the FAFSA and verification, Wiederspan recommended creating and supporting more of a data transfer between the Education Department and the IRS through the Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) transfer, expanding the use of the DRT transfer to allow institutions and individuals to use the DRT regardless of their tax filing status, and working with states to determine which FAFSA non-financial elements are needed to determine state aid eligibility, Campus Technology reported.
"There are not many things that United States senators can do to cause 20 million American families to say, 'thank you,'" Sen. Alexander said in written remarks. "After five years of work, we are ready to do just that by reducing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid—the FAFSA—from 108 questions to two dozen, and eliminate the need for families to give their financial information to the federal government twice."
"There are other steps this Committee is considering to make college worth students' time and money, but we also have the opportunity to greatly simplify the 'chilling effect' applying for federal aid has on students today," Alexander concluded.
Related Link
Campus Technology
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/12/senate-committee-advocates-fafsa-reforms.aspx