EZ FAFSA: Read the Fine Print

By Christina Satkowski and Stephen Burd

You can't always believe what you read in the papers. That old saying has gained new currency this year with all of the misleading and panicked news coverage of the student loan credit crunch. Unfortunately, the same can be said of recent reports about Congressional efforts to simplify the process of applying for financial aid.

At issue are news stories reporting on a provision in the recently-passed Higher Education Act reauthorization legislation that requires the U.S. Department of Education to create a new "EZ FAFSA," a shorter version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that tens of millions of students fill out each year to determine their aid eligibility. Recent articles in Congressional Quarterly, Education Week, The New York Times, and other publications leave the impression that the new bill streamlines the FAFSA -- from seven pages to two -- for all students.

But that's not the case. While the legislation introduces an EZ FAFSA, it makes it available to only those students whose family income is low enough that they already qualify for an expedited review of their finances when applying for federal financial aid. As a result, most aid applicants will still be stuck with the longer form.

Under the new law, students who will be eligible to use the EZ FAFSA include those whose families earn earn less than $50,000 a year and either are not required to file the long version of the 1040 federal income tax return or receive certain federal means-tested benefits such as welfare payments or food stamps. The federal government doesn't take into consideration the assets of families of students who meet these criteria.

Some student aid experts -- including our colleagues at the Institute for College Access and Success -- have questioned whether the new, shorter form will even make the process of applying for aid that much easier for the students it's supposed to serve. The EZ FAFSA is designed to eliminate questions that don't apply to the lowest income students, primarily ones about family assets. But first these students have to figure out if they qualify to use the short form, and the only way to do that is to answer certain difficult and error-prone questions that make the regular FAFSA form so challenging. In the end, having to determine which FAFSA form to use could lead to more complexity and confusion for low-income students, not less.[Disclosure: Higher Ed Watch is supported in part by the Institute for College Access & Success, with funds provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts.]

So how did so many reporters get the story wrong? It appears that they lifted verbatim from a press release that Senate Democrats issued shortly after legislation gained final approval from Congress. Touting the bill's most significant achievements, the release proudly declares that it "replaces the complex, 7-page Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) with a 2-page 'EZ-FAFSA.'" Only lower down in the text does it add that the new form is "for-low income students."

An innocent mistake? Doubtful. It appears that the bill's sponsors were all too eager to make it sound like the measure was more far-reaching than it is. Take, for example, comments that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) made to The New York Times the day after the bill passed. Mikulski, who played a pivotal role in ushering the legislation through Congress, was already speaking about the longer FAFSA in the past tense. "Though it was only a seven-page form, you had to hire a financial services outfit to do it," she stated.

Because the reauthorization legislation doesn't actually include a lot of tangible benefits for students (besides a year-round Pell Grant), politicians may have had more incentive than usual to overstate their accomplishments. In a way the lawmakers are a victim of their own success. Last year, they pushed through Congress a major expansion of federal financial aid as part of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. Without having much else to offer in terms of student aid funds, they had to find other things to boast about.

It's also understandable that journalists would be confused. The reauthorization bill is 1,158 pages of dense legislative language. Operating on very tight deadlines, it's tempting for reporters to take at face value what they are fed.

But this case shows the pitfalls of that approach. In a year when there is so much misinformation being spread about the availability of student loans, it seems particularly cruel to raise students' expectations falsely. Because the truth is, for most students, the FAFSA will remain as cumbersome as it has always been, standing as one more hurdle on the application-paved road to higher education.