Dive Brief:
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has joined the call to simplify the free application for federal student aid, saying in a recent report that its ultimate goal is to eliminate the FAFSA entirely.
- The report supports allowing high schoolers to fill out the FAFSA with two-year-old tax data, which would let them submit sooner, and expanding the auto-fill portion of the application with IRS data.
- For prospective college students who do not have tax return information to report — about 75% of FAFSA applicants — the Gates Foundation advocates using a simpler form.
Dive Insight:
The foundation’s report offers high-level policy recommendations as Sen. Lamar Alexander is shepherding a potential overhaul of the FAFSA through the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions’ reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. So far, the foundation has not released any data about how these changes would affect the cost of federal aid or its distribution among needy students. The Gates Foundation’s goal of FAFSA elimination would make federal aid decisions rely entirely on IRS-reported income.
Some recommendations for modifying FAFSA would complicate the process at the school level. If the FAFSA gets trimmed too much, colleges would be forced to create their own supplemental forms for a more granular understanding of student need.
