Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will make temporary changes to the Free
Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) verification process to provide relief to students for the 2021-22 award year, which is the remainder of the current FAFSA cycle.
Verification – an audit-like process requiring students to provide additional documentation to prove the accuracy of information on their FAFSA – will now focus solely on identity theft and fraud (V4 and V5 categories). This eliminates financial verification
(V1 category), which requires students to validate income and tax information.
Additionally, students previously selected for verification who have not yet completed the process will no longer need to, assuming no conflicting information is present. NCAN strongly advocates that students who are in this situation immediately contact
their financial aid office.
After learning about this positive development for students, NCAN Executive Director Kim Cook offered the following response:
“NCAN appreciates this streamlining of FAFSA verification, which has historically been a barrier to students accessing the federal student aid for which they are eligible. This cycle's changes are more important than ever in these times of exacerbated inequities from the pandemic.
This relief also helps our advisers and school counselors to better focus their time on outreach and support to students to stay on track for their postsecondary goals. This is especially important as we seek to build back from historic college enrollment drops of over 10% for students from low-income backgrounds.”
It is crucial that college access advisers, school counselors, and financial aid administrators now will have more time to support students in other ways, as opposed to helping them navigate the verification process. The financial aid community echoed
this impact.
“This singular act from the Department of Education provides sweeping relief to students and schools when they need it most,” said National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators President Justin Draeger. “[It] will fast-track financial aid
dollars to students who are otherwise mired in bureaucratic red tape.”
The department estimates that these changes will help 200,000 students will access financial aid and enroll in or continue their postsecondary journeys.
Given the drop in enrollment and persistence rates resulting from the pandemic, changing the trajectory for as many students as possible is paramount. Reducing the red tape burden of verification will allow students to focus on any other challenges they are currently facing before the fall semester
begins. For instance, they may turn their focus to accessing emergency aid through their higher education institution made available through the various federal COVID relief packages.
Students will continue to benefit from this flexibility for the spring 2022 semester and through the end of the aid year, June 30, 2022.
While this relief is temporary, this quote from Federal Student Aid Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray boosts the possibility of longer-term verification relief: "We will continue to evaluate what improvements can be done longer-term to make the
verification process more equitable while still preventing fraud."
NCAN strongly believes the Department of Education should work to keep verification at the lowest levels possible that still allow for detection of fraud. The department must monitor the impact of these changes, not only in light of the pandemic but also
for the insight they may offer on how future verification relief can be made permanent. In particular, one goal of both the FUTURE Act of 2019 and the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020 is an improved
verification process, and their implementation in award year 2024-25 should help to reduce the need for verification.
Institutions retain the choice to select students for verification according to their own consistently applied policies, as pointed out in a "Dear Colleague" letter published by the department earlier today outlining guidance to financial aid offices. NCAN amplifies the encouragement in the letter for colleges and universities “to consider amending such policies to limit selection in a manner that offers relief
to students and families during the ongoing national emergency.”
The guidance in the "Dear Colleague" letter also outlines how institutions should respond to verification codes in their internal databases, given how student records will be flagged in the Central Process System. The question that arises for college
access advisers is whether the verification flag will still appear on the Student Aid Report (SAR). NCAN will report back when we know more on this front.
NCAN and its members know that students have faced significant challenges over the last two financial aid cycles. The pandemic and its economic effects have exacerbated existing inequities along racial/ethnic and socioeconomic lines. This verification
relief will allow hundreds of thousands of students to access needed funds. This change is also an opportunity for the department to evaluate how future verification relief can be made permanent, with the goal of wiping “verification melt”
off the list of challenges that our field must address.
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