Last week, NCAN Executive Director Kim Cook testified in front of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee as part of a hearing titled “Time to Finish Fixing the FAFSA.”
During the hearing, the senators and the witnesses reflected on progress that has been made to simplify the FAFSA over the last several years, and discussed what the next steps should be to continue simplifying this crucial aid application form.
In her testimony, Kim commended two important FAFSA simplification advancements in the last seven years. First was the move to using prior-prior year income data on the FAFSA, which allowed for a longer FAFSA filing window. It also increased the likelihood
that students could use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool to transfer their tax information, instead of having to fill out all of those fields on the form by hand. This change increased FAFSA filing among high school seniors by 9% and reversed a four-year decline in overall FAFSA filing.
And second, Kim highlighted Congress’ passage of the bipartisan FUTURE Act in December 2019, which will remove up to 22 questions from the FAFSA and reduce the burden of verification.
But Kim also acknowledged that more can and should be done to simplify FAFSA and the verification process. She outlined three key steps for finishing FAFSA simplification:
Removing unnecessary questions from the form.
Simplifying the Pell Grant eligibility formula.
Streamlining verification.
There are 30 questions on the FAFSA that fewer than 1% of filers answer with anything other than $0. All of these questions lengthen the FAFSA, confuse filers, and make it less likely that students and families will complete the form. NCAN recommends
removing 16 of these questions. An additional seven will eventually be removed through the FUTURE Act IRS data transfer, and two have already been eliminated by tax code changes. The remaining five questions address means-tested benefits and should
be kept.
Next, Congress should simplify the Pell Grant eligibility formula to be based on adjusted gross income as related to the poverty level for a filer’s family size. This would allow for a simpler FAFSA form. But it also would allow for early awareness, as
families could see if their income qualifies them for a Pell Grant years in advance of a student actually applying to college. While this is not a promise of a Pell Grant, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) pointed out, this knowledge could help prevent
students from opting out of preparing for college due to affordability concerns.
Additionally, separating the maximum Pell amount from how eligibility is determined lays the groundwork for NCAN’s recommended increase in Pell Grant investment. NCAN believes Congress should strengthen the Pell Grant so that the maximum award covers 50% of the cost of a bachelor’s degree at a public college for in-state students.
And finally, an improved FAFSA process, particularly with additional secure data transfer, should reduce the proportion of students who are flagged for income verification. In an ideal world, it would remove the need for verification entirely.
Retiring committee chair Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) convened the bipartisan hearing with ranking member Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). Both have been working together for years to streamline the financial aid process. Their initial hope was to include FAFSA
simplification as part of the larger Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization, which is more than five years past due. But progress on HEA negotiations has stalled because the two lawmakers have not yet agreed on approaches to issues such as student
loans and campus sexual assault.
In his signature move, Sen. Alexander held up a copy of the paper FAFSA to emphasize its length (more than 100 questions). He also held up a 33-question version of the form as described in the bipartisan FAFSA Simplification Act of 2019, which Sen. Alexander
co-sponsored with Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL). NCAN supports this legislation.
Sen. Murray also supports FAFSA simplification, particularly because it can help to better align the Pell Grant program with other means-tested benefit programs.
While there were some questions about the details of the FAFSA Simplification Act, and a few additional topics raised, such as student debt and the College Transparency Act, on the whole, the nine senators who asked questions during the hearing agreed
that FAFSA simplification should be achieved.
Kim rejoined her fellow panelists from a hearing seven years ago that tackled the same topic to make the argument that students have waited long enough for easier access to financial aid. Those panelists included:
Dr. Bridget Terry Long of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Judith Scott Clayton of Teachers College-Columbia University.
Kristin Hultquist of HCM Strategists.
Joining the original four panelists was Rachelle Feldman, director of financial aid and scholarships at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The changes to FAFSA called for in the FUTURE Act are slated to be released in the 2023-24 form (on Oct. 1, 2022). Now is the time for Congress to act on these additional simplification measures so that all changes to the FAFSA can be integrated
and brought to students as soon as possible.
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