Official Comments on FAFSA Simplification

Earlier this week, we sent the Department of Education our comments on the draft 2009-2010 FAFSA, which is up for a full review under the Paperwork Reduction Act.  Our detailed recommendations focus on making the form easier to understand and use, especially for low-income students and their families.  In addition to a range of short-term fixes, we make the case for long-term simplification by prepopulating the form with IRS data. The recently reauthorized Higher Education Act paves the way for this approach, which we first proposed in early 2007. 

Read our comments

The Department is accepting public comments on the draft FAFSA until October 28: if you want to weigh in, send your comments to FAFSA.Comments@ed.gov.

Take Action for Private Loan Disclosures in CA

A bill to ensure that California students get accurate information about the risks and costs of private student loans is awaiting Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature. California residents, please tell the governor that he should sign SB 1355 without delay - the budget crisis is finally over, and this bill has no significant costs associated with it.

SB 1355 requires all public and private colleges and universities in California to explain the differences between private and federal student loans in their financial aid materials. Schools that include private student loans in their financial aid offers have to disclose details about the amounts and variability of interest rates, fees, and other important terms. The bill is supported by Consumers Union and the California Student Aid Commission, among others.

Tell the Governor to sign SB 1355!

New Resources for Community Colleges

Building on our ongoing research into financial aid policies and practices, we have developed two documents to encourage discussion and advocacy on California's community college campuses.

Our Student Action Guide encourages students to record and evaluate how their college's financial aid office serves its students by answering five basic questions.

The Top 10 Student-Centered Approaches to Financial Aid Services offers key principles for financial aid administrators to use in assessing and designing community college services.

Featured Work

Poll: Young Adults Say Higher Education is More Important but Less Affordable

A national bi-partisan survey of adults ages 18-34 reveals that young adults today believe a college education is more important than it was for their parents' generation, that it has become less affordable in the last five years, and that students are leaving school with too much debt.

Student Debt and the Class of 2010

College seniors who graduated in 2010 carried an average of $25,250 in student loan debt and also faced the highest unemployment levels for new college graduates in recent history at 9.1 percent.

Critical Choices

Our new report looks at promising and problematic practices of financial aid offices when students apply for private student loans.

Still Denied

Our new issue brief Still Denied: How Community Colleges Shortchange Students by Not Offering Federal Loans found that more than one million community college students were denied access federal student loans, the safest and most affordable way to borrow for college.

Adding It All Up

By the end of October, U.S. colleges must meet a federal requirement to create online "net price calculators." We took an early look at how colleges are approaching this requirement and found mixed results for how easy the calculators were to find, use, and understand. 

Student Debt and the Class of 2009

Our student debt report for the class of 2009 found college seniors carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt while unemployment climbed from 5.8% to 8.7% in 2009.

After the FAFSA

This report sheds light on what happens to federal financial aid applicants after they submit the FAFSA. Using 2007-08 financial aid data from 13 California community colleges, the Institute found that one in three likely Pell-eligible applicants did not receive a Pell Grant.