Is the current system for financial aid helping the people who need it most? Should there be different factors that determine eligibility?
Where do you define the line of “poor?” Imagine the desperate feeling of struggling everyday to support your family or even just put food on the table. Although a family may appear to be “ok,” in reality they may not be. Some of these struggling families are denied financial aid because they “make too much money,” when there are many debts and other situations not accounted for. The current system for financial aid should have
different factors to determine eligibility in order to help those who need aid the most. If the FAFSA were to be altered, it would be a small step for a big system, but a big step for small families.
There are four types of Federal Service Grants that are very helpful and usually don’t have to be paid back. These are normally rewarded to people who are in the military, those with exceptional needs,
and undergraduate students who have not earned a bachelor’s degree.
This process has become well known to households across America, one that you or someone you know may have experienced. FAFSA is a form filled out annually by college students through online, phone, or paper which determines their eligibility for financial aid. It does not ask questions about race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or the colleges that you plan on attending. When finished filing for FAFSA, a student air report (SAR) is sent to the student, summarizing the FAFSA responses. Are you a statistic? There was a jump in FAFSA applicants between the school years of 2005-06 and 2006-07, in 2005 being 3.7 million and in 2006 being 5.1 million. Today, in the school years of 2012-13, there were 9.2 million applicants by first quarter.
Is FAFSA helping our overall debt? There is roughly somewhere between $902 billion and $1 trillion in total outstanding student loan debt in the United States today, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports $902 billion while the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau reports $1 trillion (consumerfinance.gov). Roughly $864 billion is outstanding federal student loan debt while the remaining $150 billion is in private student loans says Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.