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The FAFSA can cause headaches, too.
Imagine that you’re planning to go to college, or perhaps already are, and there’s grant money waiting to be awarded to you. Would you take it? Before you answer, consider that you have to fill out a questionnaire with 153 questions on it, many relating to financial information that you would have to dig up past tax returns for.
According to The American Council on Education in a 2004 report, there were 1.5 million students that would have received Pell Grants had they applied for them. To apply for them, though, they have to fill out the dreaded FAFSA form. FAFSA is a fluffy sounding acronym for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and many people give up before completing it.
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman called the form an endurance test. He and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the changes at the White House today, saying the goal is to simplify the form and boost college enrollment among low- and middle-income students.
Among today’s announcements were plans to:
- Shorten and streamline the online application, reducing the number of screens by about two-thirds.
- Create a Web application to use tax data families have already submitted to the IRS, helping to eliminate confusion in answering questions.
- Ask Congress to pass legislation that removes more than half of the financial questions on the form.
Comments
Yes, you should also look into the scholarships. Many of them never get used. Strange no? All that free money. But if you look into the qualifications, you see that it is almost impossible for and student to meet the qualifications. Meanwhile companies that offer the scholarship have a nice way to keep large quantities of money tax free. A nice fat tax deduction.
Besides that Pell grants won't even cover the cost of education beyond a BA. Once you go beyond a BA, you get caught in the student loan scam, which if you are truly poor, you will get caught in at the BA level. College is big business. People all over the world are invested in American student debt. I find it sick behavior on the part of those involved. Essentially they eat the young. The colleges run as for profit businesses looking to make money. And where is the big money? Foreign students. Most American universities are at least 50% foreign students. So American students are in debt when they graduate, then they can't find jobs to pay the loans. In other words, they can't start their lives. Marriage, children, buying a house- are all put on hold until later in life. Sometimes this is too late much to the dismay of the people. I find a lot of people are forcibly kept in an infantile state these days.
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