As the days tick away toward Spring Break, many students enter a time of both relief and reluctance: relief for at the upcoming vacation from their academic loads, yet reluctance as the burden of complex financial aid forms piles up under looming deadlines. A study released last week by two Harvard University researchers estimates the average American family spends about 10 hours filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, wasting both applicants’ and processors’ time. As members of Congress debate bills to clean up the student aid process and tout their success in increasing federal loans and grants, now is the best time to give students another break by cutting down on superfluous paperwork.
The FAFSA matters immensely to millions of college students, including those ineligible for government assistance whose schools use the form to make their own financial aid decisions as well. Boston University uses the questionnaire to calculate university grants, so each year thousands of students dig out their old tax returns or hunker down with parents to pick out the same information they gave the IRS the previous spring. The numbers tend not to change because many students estimate their expected income before they file the same year’s actual income taxes. In effect, students supply the government with the same information twice.
The federal government can do better. Politicians have promised for years to simplify the entire tax process in general through proposals to simply forward family tax filings to aid givers. Most of the questions for tax and student aid forms are the same anyway, and any additional materials could be added to specialized or simplified forms similar to the 1040EZ. Under President Bill Clinton, Education Department authorities floated the idea of eliminating the FAFSA and allowing financial aid applicants to check a box on their tax forms to indicate their student status. Sen. Hillary Clinton has resurrected the notion in her presidential run, as has Sen. Barack Obama.
This time could be different if lawmakers from both parties follow up on the momentum they built last year. Though politicians have proven impotent in the past when it comes to cutting the mountains of red tape in the tax system, this year appears ripe for change. As increased political awareness from the 2008 election season converges with rising student frustration, some legislators have taken notice.
As tuition costs continue rising nationwide at increasingly faster rates, students need the FAFSA as much as colleges to ensure fair allotment of much-needed aid to families. Even the lengthy federal form pales next to even more convoluted private financial aid questionnaires like the College Scholarship Service Profile. Students should press their elected representatives to act now and give them a simpler and more efficient way of paying for college.
