Financial aid applications could be simplified

UNC senior Chelsea Krivanek almost didn’t receive financial aid her freshman year because of an error on her FAFSA application — a mistake, she said, that resulted from the confusing nature of the more-than-100-question form.

She said her aid package was delayed by three months, and since she couldn’t afford college without aid, her stress as a new freshman on campus was multiplied.

U.S. politicians have taken note of the frustrations students like Krivanek have expressed.

The Higher Education Act, which governs federal grant, loan and work-study programs, expired at the end of 2013, and Congress is considering major changes to simplify the application process — which could mean the end of subsidized Stafford loans, said Shirley Ort, associate provost and director for the UNC Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid.

In the 2012-13 school year, 5,561 UNC students received subsidized loans.

Ort said the loan system, with different names and varied interest rates, is confusing, and that some lawmakers want to streamline loans into a single unsubsidized loan program.

“That simplicity would give much greater predictability to families,” she said.

Sandy Baum, an education policy professor at George Washington University, said in an email that there is speculation that eligible students don’t apply for financial aid because the application process is so overwhelming.

Krivanek said she had to fill out the detailed forms herself; most freshmen she knows don’t fill out their own FAFSA applications.

“(The application) asks so many questions and things that I thought I would never have to know,” she said.

Goodbye to subsidies

Under the current law, the federal government pays interest on subsidized loans while students are enrolled in school and up to six months after they graduate. Ort said while eliminating the subsidy may make borrowing more expensive, the savings could be used to increase grant funding.

Baum said fairly affluent students can get subsidized loans if they attend a private college — but if these changes are implemented, they might not qualify for federal grants.

“While many people believe the dollars now spent on loan subsidies would be better spent on Pell Grants, given the current budget politics, there is no way to assure that would actually happen.”

Still, Baum said she thinks loan repayment plans for low-income students will be improved.

“(They) are really the protection students need,” she said.

Ort also said lawmakers have proposed changing how to determine student eligibility.

The proposed change will allow students’ eligibility to be determined by the tax data from two years prior — which Ort said would minimize paperwork and shorten the application.

Delayed outcomes

Though some agreement has begun forming among lawmakers during the lengthy renewal process, the reauthorization will likely not occur until 2015, Ort said.

She said Congress will then have to establish an implementation date that allows time for the Department of Education and financial aid offices to update their systems, meaning students’ financial aid might not be affected for two years.

Donald Heller, dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, said Congress tries to reauthorize the act every five years, but they often take longer than five years to finish the reauthorization.

He said that at the five-year deadline, lawmakers pass cursory legislation to extend the act for as long as necessary, ensuring the flow of federal financial aid continues.

But Ort said bipartisan legislators are finding common ground in the reauthorization.

“There are more commonalities than differences in the bills that are being introduced. A lot have focused on simplicity, accountability and transparency.”

state@dailytarheel.com