Shortening the nightmarish federal financial aid form for college loan applicants will allow lower-income students greater access to higher education.
Source: Time to Fix the Fafsa – The New York Times
I wrote,
“Colleges won’t easily give up the data they get from Fafsa. That data is too valuable for pricing, manipulating admission rates, and much else.
For example, an article in this paper noted that, for private colleges, posted tuition rates have grown much faster than net tuition rates. Fafsa data can be very useful in determining how much of a discount (euphemistically called “financial aid”) is needed to attract a particular student. (Search my blog, inside-higher-ed, with the word “pricing” for a link to the NYT article and to other similar posts.)
That’s an example of how they can use Fafsa.
To see how easy it is for them to resist change, look at how Tennessee’s Sen. Lamar Alexander and the Chancellor of Vanderbilt worked to resist regulation.
This is from a WSJ op-ed by Sen. Alexander.
“…Vanderbilt University spent a startling $150 million complying with federal rules and regulations governing higher education, adding more than $11,000 to the cost of each Vanderbilt student’s $43,000 in tuition…”
Though Vanderbilt won’t release their report, they have admitted that a “startling” (my word) $117 million was associated with its vast research program, that at least $30 million was reimbursed by the government, etc… (Search my blog for “Vanderbilt” to find links to news reports about the “scientific” (Vanderbilt’s description) report.)
So, let’s see what happens with Fafsa. My hopes are on us, the American people, but, sadly, my money has to be on the colleges.
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