<p>Susan Dynarski, a professor at the University of Michigan, and Judith Scott-Clayton, an assistant professor at Columbia University, have demonstrated that eliminating 90 percent of the application’s questions would change the average Pell grant amount by only $54 a year. They maintain that asking only two questions would give the government virtually all of the information it needs to ensure that federal aid is allocated according to need: What is your family size? And what was your household income two years ago?</p>
<p>Interesting idea.</p>
<p>It is very interesting, but they’re forgetting about assets. Based on AGI, we would qualify for CalGrant & a small amount of pell. Adding in our assets it’s a total different story (family EFC $40K). </p>
<p>For households w complex income tax situations, it is not possible to get tax returns filed early enough to meet FA application deadlines.</p>
<p>It is going to help a lot of community college students, but my guess is that we’d see a lot of public colleges suddenly requiring the much more intrusive Profile because they aren’t willing to allocate school-administered FA based on a postcard-style FAFSA. Sigh. </p>
<p>GMTplu7, this proposal uses the previous year’s income, not the year immediately before applications.</p>
<p>The proposal uses prior-prior year info, meaning that it would be 2013 for 2015-2016. Some research was done that indicates using this info will make very little difference in terms of federal aid. The reason is because the proposal is tied to is “one grant, one loan.” The grant is Pell (no more SEOG) and the loan is unsubsidized. Pell recipients are the poorest, and their income is by and large always low. With loans being unsubsidized, need isn’t a factor.</p>
<p>The problem, of course, is that schools will want more information than this in order to attempt to assist those who are not eligible for Pell but might otherwise qualify for institutional aid. Meaning, of course, that there will be something else in addition to FAFSA for institutional aid, and it will almost certainly come with a price tag (like Profile). </p>
<p>There are more issues with this proposal, of course, but I don’t have the time to go into it. ;)</p>