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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Changes come to financial aid system

Submitting a Free Application for Federal Student Aid will never be the same once the 2017-18 financial aid applications roll out late next year.

Unlike in previous years, students will not have to wait until March to file for their aid but will be able to submit applications as early as Oct. 1, 2016, for the 2017-18 school year.

President Obama joined United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 15 to address the importance of access to college education. He announced his administration’s initiative to make college more affordable to more students by allowing them to apply and receive federal 
financial aid earlier.

In the past, to file a FAFSA, a student’s parents needed to report their taxes from the previous year in order for the government to determine how much aid to award a student. Now, instead of “prior-year” planning, students will be using “prior-prior year” planning — meaning that their parents’ income report will be from 2015, not 2016.

The goal is for fewer students to be left behind: according to a 2011 study referenced by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, an estimated 2.3 million students fail to file for financial aid each year, even though they would have qualified.

Jackie Kennedy-Fletcher, IU’s director of the Office of Student Financial Assistance, said she thinks this will help students plan for IU better.

“Students will be able to receive a more accurate estimate of their financial aid package,” Kennedy-Fletcher said. “It will help them determine if IU is financially 
feasible much earlier.”

She said that students whom FAFSA doesn’t consider “dependents” will not be affected.

IU senior Ryan Clifton said it can be stressful to budget ahead of time when he doesn’t know the amount of aid he will be given until right before school.

“It comes the week before classes and you have to pay for books on top of that,” he said.

With the new system, students like Clifton will be able to assess their financial 
situation much sooner.

The study NASFAA published in 2013 led the organization to conclude that a system using this prior-prior tax return data would help low and middle income families the most.

Jacqueline Fernette, director of strategic communications and marketing in IU’s Office of Enrollment Management said the University staff is still in the process of understanding the new changes.

“We will need to see more details about the change in the federal aid process to understand how we will need to realign our own processes,” Fernette said.

Kennedy-Fletcher said a new federal system might bring some in-state 
challenges.

“There will be some technical/system challenges to address,” Kennedy-Fletcher said. “The state will have to asses their timeline/process for determining state eligibility to see if it can be aligned with the (federal) process.”

The NASFAA warned that a switch to prior-prior year planning may “increase program costs due to more aid-eligible recipients.” But this did not deter them from recommending the switch.

Fernette said the University also supported the switch to the new system.

“We have long been an advocate for this change,” Fernette said. “We look forward to seeing it implemented over the next couple of years.”

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