Many are now calling for greater simplification, including Senators Lamar Alexander and Cory Booker, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (full disclosure: BE Smart, a Black Enterprise education initiative, is a Gates grantee). A goal of simplification is to reduce the burden of verification, which often requires documentation that’s difficult to come by, and which falls hardest on the lowest income students.
FAFSA Complexity
Perhaps a simplified FAFSA would have helped Generette. To resolve the default, he first needed to consolidate his loans, a process that took about two months, then the school was willing to process his FAFSA so he could get the Pell grant he was eligible for. “But that started a whole new series of inquiries and paperwork that then took about five months before he got the money to pay his tuition,†says Frishberg, alluding to the verification process by which college financial aid administrators request documentation to verify the information in the FAFSA. Many colleges verify 30% of their FAFSA applications, but there are others that verify 100%.
When Generette attempted to file the FAFSA, he was younger than 24 but filed as an independent, which means he could not expect any financial assistance from his parents. He was also homeless, but had not gone to a homeless shelter, making verification of his homelessness difficult. “I never had a stable job. I did side jobs, I worked in home improvement. So I couldn’t provide pay stubs. I had to provide letters that said this is what I do to provide for my children, but there was no documentation.â€
The lowest income students are the ones encountering this kind of scrutiny. “It isn’t a straightforward process that anyone could simply understand how to cut through the red tape, especially students who don’t have a permanent place of residence, or who aren’t traditional–living at home with mom and dad,†says Frishberg. “Filing the FAFSA itself is not that hard, but once you get through that process there are so many more levels of scrutiny and proof that students have to go through, especially the lowest income students. We found that our very lowest income students got more questions than anyone else. So it wasn’t a straightforward process to receive the funding they were eligible for.â€
Frishberg says the required documentation for her lowest income students was hard to come by and involved dealing with estranged fathers, child support payment documents, tax returns from a parent they no longer lived with.
The good news for Generette is that BridgeEdU came into his life. He has re-enrolled for the fall, and “this time his FAFSA went through smoothly!†says Frishberg, who also credits Generette’s determination. Unfortunately, not all students have access to similar programs. In the 2010—2011 school year nearly 750,000 students failed to resubmit FAFSAs that were returned because of insufficient data. For them, a simplified FAFSA could have made the difference.
FAFSA Resources
Sandy Jimenez, a trainer/college access counselor at the Goddard Riverside Community Center in New York, recommends that students who have difficulty filing the FAFSA connect with a local community-based organization, their own high school guidance counselor, or a volunteer organization, such as your city’s version of New York Cares. She also notes that undocumented students are not eligible to receive federal aid and should not file the FAFSA.
In addition, FAFSA is on Facebook and Twitter. Each month, Federal Student Aid hosts an hour-long session during which anyone can tweet questions to #AskFAFSA. Answers are provided in real time.