NASFAA Mention: Student Aid Verification Process Falls Short
"The U.S. Education Department’s process for verifying the accuracy of student aid applications has no reasonable assurance of identifying errors, a Thursday report from the department's inspector general found," Inside Higher Ed reports.
"The report is the inspector general's first look in several years at the process, which requires students to confirm the accuracy of their family’s financial information. But it backs up what financial aid administrators have reported recently about verification, which is widely seen as an obstacle for low-income students to get the assistance they need to attend college.
Colleges are supposed to use the verification process to make sure students are receiving the correct amount of federal aid. But additional bureaucratic hurdles can mean many students never complete the application process.
Among the issues identified by the inspector general: the Education Department hadn’t evaluated which income data it used to verify the accuracy of financial aid applications -- items like adjusted gross income, income taxes paid and the total number of family members in the household. But the department couldn't provide analysis showing that those data elements were most prone to introduce errors in a student aid award.
The department also hadn’t evaluated whether its target number of aid applications flagged for verification is appropriate. In each financial aid cycle, the Education Department seeks to verify 30 percent of all applications for federal student aid received. Federal officials identify those applications and task colleges with verifying students' family income. But the inspector general found that it hadn't evaluated whether that target was overly burdensome for colleges and students.
'It affirms what aid administrators have been reporting for years, which is that there’s a lack of robust analysis happening at the department to justify the verification gauntlet we put our least-advantaged students through,' said Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
A NASFAA survey of member institutions last year found that 84 percent of student aid applicants who went through verification saw either no change to their expected family contribution or a change so small it did not affect the size of their Pell Grants. At two-year colleges, which serve higher proportions of low-income students, 91 percent of aid applicants saw no change to their Pell award after verification.
The organization argued those survey results suggested verification rates were too high or that algorithms used by the Education Department to select aid applications were poorly targeted."
NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.
Publication Date: 5/17/2019
