Carrie Warick was working at home in her fuzzy red slippers earlier this week when she got some long-awaited news. Big changes in federal student-aid policy were coming — changes she and many other college-access advocates had long pushed for.
On Sunday members of Congress on both sides of the aisle announced an agreement to include revisions in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the Fafsa, in the omnibus spending bill then under negotiation. Warick, director of policy and advocacy for the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN, wrote the organization’s first brief on simplifying the Fafsa back in 2012. She has since helped make the case for why streamlining the complicated aid form would help more students get to college.
This is a big achievement for the college-access field, and something that will have very real benefits for many students.
It’s been a grind. Each year Warick attended a dozen meetings about Fafsa simplification on Capitol Hill, handled follow-up phone calls and emails, collected a ton of data on Fafsa completion, gathered observations from on-the-ground college advisers, and wrote dozens of briefs, memos, and blog posts. All the while she helped students share powerful stories about their struggles to complete the onerous form.
Ultimately, just about everyone with a stake in education policy came to agree that the Fafsa needed simplifying. The question was: When would it happen?
Though the pandemic nixed the possibility of attaining the long-delayed reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this year, legislators nonetheless inserted several significant changes in the Fafsa, federal-aid methodology, and the Pell Grant program into the Consolidated Appropriations Act, the vast spending bill, which Congress approved on Monday.
“This is a big achievement for the college-access field,” Warick said, “and something that will have very real benefits for many students.”
The bill’s student-aid provisions will take effect in the 2023-24 aid cycle. That means the changes will be reflected on the Fafsa that will become available on October 1, 2022 (though some provisions could take effect sooner).
On Tuesday, Warick walked The Chronicle through some of the key changes — and how they would help students and families. Here’s a quick look at the essentials.
The Fafsa will be shorter.
NCAN and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators have long sought to reduce the number of questions on the Fafsa, contending that a shorter, simpler application would help more students complete the form and receive the aid for which they’re eligible. Dozens of existing questions — including some for which less than 1 percent of filers answer with a non-zero response — will be soon be eliminated.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee and an advocate of Fafsa simplification, told some reporters this week that the new form would have a total of 36 questions, down from 108. The latter is the total number of questions on the paper version of the form, which hardly any Fafsa filers use.
“Proportionally, that sounds about right,” Warick said of the numbers cited by Alexander, “but counting the total number of questions is complicated.”
One reason: The exact number of questions students must answer will vary, as it does now, according to their financial situation. (Independent students, for instance, answer fewer questions than dependent students do.) Also, some questions have multiple subparts.
The Fafsa will be friendlier.
Though no one would ever describe a financial-aid form as “fun,” Warick said several changes would make it more user-friendly. For one thing, most aid applicants will no longer have to self-report income data on the Fafsa. That’s because the new legislation builds on a 2019 law under which data on taxed and untaxed income are automatically transferred from an applicant’s tax return directly to the Fafsa.
Also, more students will be able to have their aid eligibility calculated without consideration of their assets, including those who don’t file income-tax returns and, under certain conditions, those who have an adjusted gross income, or AGI, of $60,000 and filed a simple tax return.
Bottom line: For many applicants, the pared-down form will make applying for aid less tedious, time-consuming, and anxiety-inducing, Warick said. And families with the lowest incomes will have fewer questions to answer than will families with higher incomes.
Eligibility for Pell Grants will expand — and become more predictable.
Legislators project that several changes will allow 1.7 million more students to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award each year while conferring eligibility for partial awards to hundreds of thousands more.
Incarcerated students will no longer be barred from receiving Pell Grants. Ditto for those convicted of drug-related offenses.
A “lookup table” will give consumers a better sense of where they stand.
One fundamental change: Starting with the 2023-24 cycle, there will be a new way to determine which Fafsa filers will receive a guaranteed minimum or maximum Pell Grant. The new measure will be based on dependency status, number of parents in the household, and AGI as a percentage of the federal poverty level.
That relatively simple determination, Warick explained, will allow for the creation of a “lookup table” to give consumers a better sense of where they stand.
“This is going to be a tool that students and families can use far in advance of filling out the Fafsa,” Warick said, “to know whether they’ll be eligible for at least that minimum award and whether or not they can get the maximum.”
That’s important because many families with financial need wrongly think they’re not eligible for any aid. “That perception can discourage them from completing the Fafsa and finding out how much aid they can get,” Warick said. “Now there will be a better way to signal to students that, yes, you should go through this process, because at least you’re going to get something.”
The legislation acknowledges the diversity of family structures in some key ways.
Dependent students with married parents earning less than 175 percent of the poverty level — and dependent students with a single parent and independent students earning less than 225 percent — would receive a full Pell award. Students who qualify for more than the minimum Pell award, but who do not automatically qualify for the maximum amount, would be encouraged to complete the Fafsa to see how much they would get.
The legislation acknowledges the diversity of family structures in some key ways. “There’s a recognition here of single parents, particularly single parents who are students themselves, which are a growing part of the college population,” Warick said. “Also, for the maximum Pell award, a dependent student with married parents and a dependent student with a single parent are balanced on different scales — that’s important.”
For the first time, there will be a minimum-Pell-award designation calculated the same way as the maximum award, only using a higher set of eligibility thresholds.
Goodbye, EFC. Hello, SAI.
Aid amounts for students who qualify for a Pell Grant, but who don’t automatically qualify for the maximum amount, would be determined by the new Student Aid Index, or SAI.
Fafsa filers currently see an “Expected Family Contribution,” or EFC, after completing the form. That’s a misleading and widely confusing term for what is, in fact, a formula for allotting federal aid funds — not a measure of what a family can or should pay.
In short, the SAI will replace the EFC on the form. “The SAI will determine the ability of a family to pay,” Warick said, “in a more nuanced way than the current EFC.”
For instance: There will be a “negative SAI” of up to $1,500 for non-tax-filers and students who, according to the formula’s calculations, require the greatest financial support.
Though negative-SAI students would receive the same maximum Pell award as students whose SAI is $0, Warick said, the negative-SAI indicator “will be a way to signal to institutions which students have the most need, by showing them further gradations in the needs level than we have now.”
The maximum Pell Grant … didn’t increase much.
The maximum award for the 2021-22 aid cycle will be $6,495, an increase of just $150. That concerns Warick.
After all, a recent NCAN analysis led the organization to conclude that fewer than half of community colleges and only a quarter of public four-year institutions are affordable for the average Pell Grant recipient.
That’s why the group plans to push for a doubling of the maximum award in the months ahead. “Fafsa simplification and getting more students to apply for aid is a first step,” Warick said, “but we know there are not enough affordable options out there for families considering higher ed. We need a broad investment in the Pell Grant program.”
This week, though, it was time to celebrate a bit. On Monday, Kim Cook, NCAN’s executive director, tweeted a video from the organization’s staff meeting. It was a “ceremonial shredding” of the existing Fafsa and its many questions.
