Fix FAFSA!

I agree with MacAdvisor on this issue. Having an age dependency for 24 years old is completely unrealistic. My parents earned a decent living but due to some financial issues in thier past were not able to provide financial assistance to me during college. The result? As a 25 year old college graduate I owe 45k in student loans because i was unable to recieve one drop of federal money despite graduating from a poor rural town as a national merit scholar. In addition, my mother and father now live halfway across the country and I was forced to sit out a semester of college because i wasn't able to collect their tax information from them in a timely manner. If the governement wants to fix the system they should lower the dependency age, make it easier to file as an independent, and use a more accurate measure of a student's abliity to pay for college then how much their parents reported on the taxes.

Dear Mr. President, The trouble with FAFSA is not the length of it. Obviously it will help us all a great deal to be able to import tax information into the form, but this will not necessarily help with the overall situation. What the biggest issue is, sir, is that the dependency cut off is 24 years old. If you really wanted to effect change in eligibility then sit down and make the cut off 20 years old. Sir, I'd like to invite you to spend a couple of hours seeing what sort of havoc the dependency rules create. There is no such thing as a 'normal' situation any more. How many more dreams must we shatter because a 19,20, or 21 year old who has no contact with their parents cannot complete a FAFSA because they are considered 'dependent'? No, it's not that easy to get a dependency override. These kids are supporting themselves, and gee, old enough to serve in the Armed Forces but not old enough to go to school without mom and dad's information? Seriously, Mr. President, what's wrong with this picture? You want to simplify student aid? Come talk to me and my coworkers because we are in the trenches every single day dealing with this.

The problem with the FAFSA is and will remain that it requires a population of mostly adults to apply based on their parents income, something to which they do not have a claim. I am 52-years old and am going back to school in September. I don't have to provide tax returns and income statements from my 78-year old father. Why should an 18-year old adult have to supply information about his 40-year old father and mother? Parents are not generally legally mandated to pay for college, so a child doesn't have any right to participation by the parents. The real solution is to provide financial aid to anyone, even children with wealthy parents, to go to college. We could limit the amount to that needed to attend state schools and let private schools either provide the difference or talk the parents into providing it. After our foolish and wasteful health care system, our system of paying for higher eduction is the next disgrace. We want our population to go to college, just like we want them to finish high school. We want them to go to graduate school. We should pay for it and stop needing 40 page forms to do it.

Sista-How can you say the formula hasn't changed in over 20 years? Ever heard of Reauthorization, Congressional Methodology, HERA, ECASLA, HEOA, etc., etc. ? Financial aid administrators are constantly dealing with a barrage of politically expedient regulatory revisions, some enacted retroactively. And why force free money down someone's throat who refuses to take the initiative to apply for it? The FAFSA ain't rocket science.

MrNiceGuy: If you've experienced that dramatic a change in income from 2008 to 2009, then you should ask the Financial Aid Office to use your projected earnings for 2009 as the basis for your aid eligibility. There are provisions on the law to deal with such anomalies. You qualify for a "special circumstance" filing which should yield you some grant money of you will only make $15K.

Mr. Duncan should stop hyperventilating about FAFSA and concentrate on the real preoblems with higher ed like the 35% drop out rate, even after 6 years spent in a four year programs. Waht a waste of time and money. We need to strengthen our vocational and technical school system. We need computer specialilsts, carpenters, and electricans far more than we need more lawyers and accountants. Sure we should simplify the FAFSA, but that is hardly a panacea for higher ed.

It wasn't that hard for me, as a poor white male coming out of high school, to figure out five years ago, but I guess I'm not the norm.

It wasn't that hard for me, as a poor white male coming out of high school, to figure out five years ago, but I guess I'm not the norm.

I agree with NiceGuyMike. I've filled out the FAFSA for three years now and it isn't difficult. And explain again why the government shouldn't wait on students to apply?! Because maybe some students won't ever do so if someone doesn't do it for them?! Newsweek's brilliant solution is to have the government take responsibility for students who won't take any initiative on their own behalf.

I did the FAFSA, by myself, in about 30 minutes. It's just not that difficult. And, as far as income not chaning that much from year to year, tell that to those of us who got laid off. Last year $60K+. This year, $15K+. I've had several other years not involving layoffs where my income changed more than $15K in a year. As far as giving someone a waiver to rummage through my records, or ask someone to automatically notify me when I'm eligible for aid, nuh-uh. First of all, how do I know they're really looking at *my* records. Secondly, what about those of us who aren't traditional atudents? Or students who will never go to college? Or the government simply not realizing that something untoward has happened? Or someone simply not wanting to seek financial aid? Can you guarantee the records will correctly reflect information in years to come? What about when information is inevitably left on a train somewhere because someone decided to bring it home from work on a laptop? I would much rather this be an entirely face-to-face process, but I'm fine with it the way it is. If you want changes, please reserve them for yourself.