"The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) recently came out with a series of ten papers on ways to streamline the notoriously complicated FAFSA, the application for student financial aid," Diverse: Issues in Higher Education reports.

"With grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last summer, the organization created an updated version of its 2015 proposal for simplifying the FAFSA and called on a slew of experts to assess the work and contribute research of their own.

The FAFSA can be an onerous process for low-income students under ordinary circumstances, said Karen McCarthy, NASFAA’s director of policy analysis, but the release of these papers feels 'particularly timely' during the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 has swiftly changed people’s enrollment plans as some choose to go back to school or switch institutions.

For students making those last-minute decisions, 'we really need this FASA application process to work well for them, because it can’t be a burdensome, time-consuming process … That really does affect people’s plans. The things that they had decided they wanted to do may not theoretically be possible if the FAFSA process takes too long.'"

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 8/13/2020