Transcripts For CSPAN3 Student Aid Application 20171129

Senate committee on Health Education and pensions will please come to order. Im usually on time and excuse me for being late. We reauthorize a Higher Education act. Today were looking at ways to simplify the free application for student aid or fafsa to make it easier for students to apply for federal Financial Aid. Well introduce the witnesses and after your testimony senators will have five minutes of questions. Senators may be coming and going because of the tax bill. Nearly four years ago in a hearing before this committee an unusual thing happened. Four witnesses from diverse back grntds agreed that almost all of the 108 questions on the free application for federal student aid or fafsa are unnecessary. The fafsa is the government form 20 million families fill out every year to qualify for it federal aid that helps nearly 20 Million Students attend universities. Weve spent a lot of time holding this to remind people of all it questions even though most people fill it out online. Theres still the same number of questions. End of the hearing i asked the witnesses if they could simplify the fafsa in four separate letters to us they said they could do it together in one letter. Senator bennet and i then had the same reaction. If theres that much consensus on how to make it easier for nearly 20 million families to apry for federal aid, why dont we actually do it . Well, that was four years ago. Senator bennet and i set about to turn 108 questions into two. On a post karbd that dr. Scott clayton, who is here today recmebded in her testimony four years guy. Are lets take a moment to talk about why simplifying the fafsa is important. Which means if you elect, youll have to fill it out again to continue to receive your aid for sophomore year and beyond. Weve heard over and over iagain how difficult it is the first time. Second, this complexity frustrates it goal of the pel grant which is to help low if hadcome Students Attend College because it discourages them from apply frag aid. I know in tennessee post secondary education is nou free, the complexity of the fafsa is the single biggest impediment to more students taking advantage of what we call tennessee promise. The former president in memphis bleechbs he loses 1500 students each simester because of the complexity of the form. Third, this wastes time and money that can be better spent using the right major and understand the impacts of taking out student loans. After four years of discussion over how to simplify the fafsa, it is time to come to a result. Our first ord orch business after the first of to the year will be to markup a reauthorization in the Higher Education act. Our central focus will be to make it simpler and easier to apply for federal aid and to pay their loans back and to cut through the jungle of red tape that federal law and regulations imposes so College Administrators can spend their time and money instead for the benefit of students. We have a number of bipartisan proposals that seek to do the same things. Senator bennet, ber, isaacson, king and booker introduced our legislation to cut 108 questions down to two questions. We have listened to students, College President s. We have done this in a bipartisan way for four years. Well hear some of those good ideas today. Senator murray as a bill to simplify for homeless students and students without parents. We work would the Obama Administration to allow students to fill out with their Tax Information from two years before they if had role in college instead of one so they could file in the fall, rather than wait in the spring. The result is senator ben squt i are completing a bill to reduce 108 questions to as few as 15 and no more than 25 questions depending on how you answer questions about your family. We will do this prince pale by taking the Tax Information that americans give to the federal government and incorporating that Tax Information into the fafsa. Over and over again ive been asked if ive already given my Tax Information to the federal government, dwhie i have to give it again to the fafsa . My information is you shouldnt have to. Once is enough. Our proposal will tell students the amount of their pel grant, money they dont have to pay back, instead of after theyve already been accepted for schools. I have a long perspective on this. As education secretary i over saw the implementation of it first fafsa shortly before i left office. While the fafsa is a complex form today it was actually created then to reduce the burden on students by combining state, and Financial Aid applications if to one single application. The first had four pages of kwelgzs and 12 pages of directions. Todays fafsa is 10 pages with directions included on the form plus an additional 66 pages of instructions. Now 25 years later i sit here as chairman of the Senate Education committee trying to update the Higher Education act and once again simplify how they apry for federal fine angle aid. I want our committee to discuss different proposals and write and pass a final bill. 25 years after the first fafs and after the first hearing, it is time to bring it discussion to a result. Weicide be able to say to the nearly 20 million families if had stead of answering 1 heir 8 questions, you only have to answer 15 to 25. Once is enough. To give your basic information about family size and income to the federal government and if stead of waiting until youve been admitted to college, well tell you about your pell grant while youre still shopping around for schools. Thank you very much for, mr. Chairman and i want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing from all of you about your experiences with the fafsa form and how we can best improve access to federal Financial Aid. However, navigating fafsa is one of the many challenges students are facing and for them they dont come up one at a time. Theyre are are had wrapped together. College students are taking on mountains of debt and theyre concerned about finding a job after school, whether its preparing them for the work force and respected by employers and a lot more. So in order to epihad our students, we have to make sure were trying to solve the big problems as well as the smaller ones. We need tackle the issues that Impact College students the most and i believe on this committee that has done so much good Work Together that we can do that. Thats why its so critical we take a compry hencive approach to update the Higher Education act. Chairman alexander and i have heard concerns that pursuing a comp reense haddive approach would be too difficult. In these partisan times well never be able to get it done and thats what we heard, by the way bfore we did no child left behind. People said it was too toxic to touch. They said we should just focus on low hanging fruit and leave the rest for another time, another congress. Thankfully chairman alexander and i pushed those nay sayers aside. We got to work and we got it done. So im hopeful and confident we can Work Together on a comp reense haddive aproach to reauthirthe act. There are too many issues when it comes to accessing affordable, high quality education. Weve got to take a holistic aproach to Higher Education reform to build a system that epis the most students. We can Work Together to address issues like fafsa simp luification and i know how imp portent that is and we must also tackle the big problems this critical law aims to address. Because i believe in order to truly solve it challenges students face, we have to address four major issues, the rising cost of college, School Programs not held had accountable for students success. Barriers for working families, students of color and first generation students to attend college and ongoing threats to runnering in a safe environment. Theyre whether import ntd. First, weve got to address sky rocketing costs of college and find ways for more students to graduate without debt and we must consider the full cost beyond just tuition. Housing, textbooks, child care. Secondly we need to make sure colleges and Work Force Training programs are producing good outcomes for students and preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow and being held accountable with had that is ntd the case and that as to include providing stutdants with the information they need to make smart choices about their future befear they enroll in classes with an expensive price tag. Third, we need improve underrepresented students ability to access Higher Education and finally we need insure every student as it ability to learn in a safe if environment, free from discrimination and violence and that must if hadclude doing more to combat the National Epidemic of Campus Sexual Assault and beginning to address dangerous hazing practices. Of course simplifying the fafsaicide be part of our reauthorizatio reauthorization. Ive heard had across my state how complicated and difficult fill thouth application can be. Simplifying fafsa would help ease the burden of College Costs for students who may be leaving money on the table and by addressing concerns from nontraditional backgrounds we can help open the doors of opportunity to students who otherwise might not get the Financial Aid they need. And security requirements, verification, refiling the form each year can create real barriers for students who deserve our help. While its clear simplifying would help, it aloan cannot solve the challenges that families across the country face in addressing and affording Higher Education. So this is a good first step and i hope we can continue this conversation with a comprehensive solution in mind and have hearings on a variety of issues impacting their students and families. This committee has a history of Bipartisan Solutions to complex problems and i am confident. Our students are counting on the and before i close i want to make one final point. Its so important i feed to mention before we get too deep. One of the largest hurdles is how secretary devoes and the department of education are today picking and choosing when to follow laws written by this committee and passed by the congress. Right now secretary devos and her department are blatantly violating the k12 law we just updated two years ago. They wont follow the very stat ware language this committee settled on. You and i Work Together on every Student Succeeds act. We reached an agreement while ifcluding clear requirements in the statute. Theyre in black and white. Theyre in the law and have nothing to do with regulations. And i had deeply troubled that vilashz oz of the law are being ignored by the department of education. The law requires in statute that states identify three distinct categories of schools for improvement. Bottom 5 , all schools where one subgroup is consistently underperforming and schools where any subgroup is performing as poorly as the bottom 5 . But plans are now being approved that violate this and there are more examples id be happy to talk through but chairman, alexander if today it department is choosing to implement whatever it feels like, which i believe they are in the approval of state plans so far, this this committee needs to hear from the secretary directly on how she intends to fall though Laws Congress agrees to shall especially as we begin to reauthorize the hea. I hope we can hear from the Department Soon and then i believe we can begin addressing the critically important issues in Higher Education. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator murray for your comments on both subjects and ill be looking forward to talking to you about following the law. We even put provisions in the law to prohib hadt a secretary from doing certain things. As far as Higher Education, i agree with what you said. Im eager to sit down and visit with you and get started on reauthorizing the Higher Education act. We figured out how, in this committee too, tackle big issues and accommodate lots of points of views and come out with results and i think people appreciate it when we do. My hope would be that we can take the bipartisan work over it last three or four years really and turn it if had to a result in the First Quarter of next year and i look forward to working with you on that. Im pleased to welcome our witnesses to todays hearing focussed on simplifying the fafsa. Like to ask senator ben toot introduce the first witness. Thank you, mr. Chairman and id like to thank you and Ranking Member murray for focusing our attention on the important issue. I want to thank you for your partnership on fafsa. I know our first witness agrees with what were trying to do. Its my plesher to introduce nancy from my home state of colorado. For the last 13 years shes served as president of the Colorado Community college system. The largest system in the state that educates one out of three of our undergraduate students. Theyve launched ambitious initiatives to make college more affordable. Under her leadership, the system revamped the Education Program and streamlined so they can graduate faster and with less debtd. So more students can pursue a ninetyfouryear degree and increased saving our students and families roughly 90 million in tuition costs. Her leadership in Higher Education is just the latest chapter in a career of public service. Previously served in theed ministration and as chief economist for the legislature. She announced her retirement. And thanked for her servees to colorado and her time to join us this morning. I now recognize senator cane for ms. Williams. Thank you and all to the chair and ranking. Its an honor to introduce Elaine Williams who is a richmonder just like me but here because of her really inspirational work as a community advocate. Ms. Williams is a recent graduate of the Virginia Common Wealth University School Social work and i have bcu grads and social Work Programs on my staff. She currently works with the wyca helping people avoid homelessness and she was an unaccompanied homeless child coming if to college and grappling with fafsa. Especially not just the form but the verification requirements of fafsa. So i hope well get if had to the form and the issues. Now she is the cofounded change it world rva which is a Nonprofit Organization to serve youth experiencing homelessness in richmond and in college she work would a group called advocates for richmond youth, a passion for homeless kids is a big driver for her. So thank you for your dedication and your Inspirational Service and we look forward to hearing from you today about how we can better serve young people who face some of the same challenges you face. Our third witness is dr. Clayton. Shes an education at Teachers College columbus university. Community College Research center and the brookings institution. Shes testified before the senate twice. Earlier including in the hearing four years ago that led to the fast act. She made her first fafsa simplification proposal in 2007. She earned her ph. D. From harva harvard. Our next witness is mr. Justin draeger, president of the National Association of student Financial Aid administrators. His organization represents those who serve 90 of american College Students. Prior to becoming president of his organization he worked as a Financial Aid director regulatory policy analyst and spokesperson. Dr. Kim reuben in the Tax Policy Center that irving institute. Her research focuses on fiscal institutions, Public Sector labor markets, state and local tax policy and budgets. He conducted a Detailed Analysis of various fafsa proposals today. She earned her ph. D. From m. I. T. As a reminder if youll sums are your testimony in five minutes, that will leave more time for senators to ask questions and i would simply mention this is what we call a bipartisan hearing which means senator murray and i have agreed on the subject and weve agreed on the witnesses. So it ought to be a good discussion. Why dont we begin with dr. Mccallen and well go down the line. Welco welcome. Thank you. Thank you, chairman alexander, Ranking Member murray and members of the committee. Thank fryou fl the opportunitie to speak food. The colorado serving approximately 138,000 students at 13 colleges in 39 locations. And despite the fact we intentionally keep our tuition low, our students do strug tool pay for college. Approximately 40 of our students receive some form of federal or state fine apancial and when you factor in our nonHigh School Students, about half qualify for federal Financial Aid or state Financial Aid through the form. Altogether our students receive 211 million of Financial Aid. 90 million of which is the pell grant and 33 to pursue their secondary education. If creasingly we know the tick toot succeeding in this Economy Today to have a post 2ndary degree. 74 of our post of our new jobs being created in the state of colorado by 2020 require some form of post secondary education. And we know that comcan pleating the fafsa form is difficult, complex and daunting for many of our students. Particularly for first generation students to comprise 54 of our overall student population. Community colleges have persistently had the lowest fafsa Completion Rate of any sector of Higher Education. Despite it fact that we know we have it largest number and share of low ifcome students and by not completing the fafsa forms, what we see happening is students foregoing their opportunity for Higher Education and to succeed in this increasingly complex and competitive economy. When asked why tid they not complete the form, they had numerous reasons. They thought they were ineligible. 25i didnt want tago to into debt and that does not require you to go into debt. And many have missed the opportunity to get those grants to further their education. The lengthy application with the 66 pages of instructions is the first barrier to completing the fafsa form. The next barrier and a significant challenge for us is the verification process. Our Financial Aid administrators estimate 1 4 of their time is spent on the verification process. In our system 94,169 students submitted the fafsa form last year. But only 53582 actually cull pleated the form and of the 94,000, approximately 37,000 were selected for verification which is somewhat higher than the National Average and of those students selected only 16 thousand 728 completed the process. The complexity and length of the form and the confusion over what number to put in what box on the form, all together really has limited and precluded access to Higher Education. And this simple act of simplifying the form really could go a long way towards improving access and ehelp hadding students get their degree and therefore compete in the economy. And we know if we were able to free up some of our Financial Aid administrators time and not have to have them do extensive verification support. We Completion Rates anywhere from 6 to 11 Percentage Points. We could help in Financial Literacy more than we do today. We can provide more increased support and have precollegiate outreach. One of the biggest concerns we have is of 100 ninth graders, only 43 are going to college. Its abizmal for students of color in particular. As a result it could definitely help students pursue their goals. So thank you for you your attention to helping improver Higher Education for our 1250udants and im open to questions you may have. Good morning. The problem of Youth Homelessness is bigger than many people realize. A new National Report at it university of chicago found at least 700,000 youth between the ages of 13 to 17 and 3. 5 million young adults between the ages of 13 to 25 experience homelessnessness in a year. This represents one in 30 between the ages of 13 to 17 and 1 in 10 young adults between kwaenl to 25. I was one of them. Mine began in middle school. My mother was not able to help me due to struggles in Mental Health and drug problems. My mother lost custody of me at one point. I moved in with relatives without a stable place to stay six different times. Two months before high school graduation, i had had to stay with one of my friends. I knew i had to continue to pursue my dreams of college. I grew up in poverty and did not see Anyone Around me going to college. I wanted Something Different for myself and future. But as i tried to fill out the fafsa, the counselor kept asking for my mothers financial information. I finally broke down and told her my mother was not in the picture. She contacted the high School Social worker who asured me i could go to college. She allowed me to fill out the fafsa. Soon after i was accepted to virginia university. Unfofrp if thely i needed to live on campus at Virginia Union to go to school, which added to the cost. I had had to work, which prevented me from fulfilling the hours needed for one of the scholarships. So i lost that scholarship. I asked the Financial Aid office for assistance and they told me to take a year off from work. This time at virginia commonwealth university. Although i many great experiences, the fafsa process presented obstacles. They required me to submit two letters to verify my status as well as other kinds of documentations. I lost out on grants awarded on a first come, first serve basis. I had to take out more loans. The following year fafsa experience was even worse. The Financial Aid aufrs told me because i was no longer in high school they wont accept a letter from the social worker. They demanded a certain let certain kinds of homeless shelters but there are no homeless shelters for youth and adult shelters told me to stay with family members, which was impossible. Every year it was daunting to answer questions 53 and 54. It was troms itting to explain my situation over and over to strangers and feel like they didnt believe me. It also contributed to my student debt because i lost out on a lot of grants caused by documentations requirements. Despite all of that, i graduated in may of 2017. Now work at the ywca of richmond. Im a role mod tool my four young siblings and my peers in the community. My three top recommendations for congress to make the fafsa simpler are eliminate the requirement for unaccompanied Homeless Youth to have their status determined each year. This requirement creates more paperwork burdens for students and adds to our trauma. Second, reduce the documentations requirements for determining that a youth is homeress and unaccompanied. If a youth has cogumentation, the Financial Aid office should accept it and third, requiring colleges and universities to designate a staff person single point of contact to help Homeless Youth and foster youth just like mckinney liaisons. We need a person who connects us to resources on and off campice and helps us navigate Financial Aid. In closing i would like to thank you for this opportunity and hope my testimony will help inform decision about the fafsa for youth just like me. Thank you. Thats an impressive testimony and impressive effort that youve made. We thank you for coming. Dr. Scott clayton, welcome back. Thank you. My role i think is to briefly share a few Key Research Findings related to the topic which formed my own policy recommendations. First access to College Matters more now than ever. Those have not own low more stable employment, theyre also more likely to vote. And please note that when im talking about college, im not just talking about the traditional fouryear degree but the full range of post secondary education that federal student aid supports. Second, decades of Rigorous Research across a range of contexts, shows us that Financial Aid works. New evidence shows that it can also help students graduate faster and can read to higher earnings and higher rates of Home Ownership after college as well. And yet, despite rising returns to college and despite substantial amounts of Financial Aid, the gap between high and low ifcome families is actually bigger than it was a generation ago. Federal student aid needs to do more to narrow this gap. The details of Program Design really matter. Unfortunately the federal student aid programs hide their benefits nad thickt of bureaucracy and this is embodied in the fafsa. For many families filling out a fafsa is more complicated than their annual income taxes. It took unhadses of lines of code to describe. But by this point everyone knows that its annoying. But we wouldnt be here today if it were just about an annoyance. Research shows and weve just heard that the form itself has become a significant barrier to college access. Its complexity and lack of transparency makes it very hard for students to figure out what theyre eligible for and it generates unnecessary hurdles, just as students are juggling many other responsibilities and navigating their path to college. We dont have to speculate about whether the fafsa is really a barrier. Several high quality randomized expe experiences have shown with they receive assistance filling out and submitting the form, enrollment and retention rates increase. One study found providing asishance increased College Enrollment by eight points. We could do even better. My fourth key finding from research is that all this complexity is not even necessary to accurately predict what students will qualify for. Analysts including myself have conducted simulations in which real applications are run through but with various elements disregarded. These show both pell eligibility and the expected family contribution or efc can be replicated with a dhie gree of accuracy using only a handful of key items. Asset information is perapse it biggest surprise. For the vast majority of applicants they dont play any role at all or even thin broader calculation of efc. So the benefits of complexity are small while the costs are very large. So my fifth and final conclusion is that simplification is impinantly feasible. We can do this. Progress has already been made in eliminating questions for umthe form, automatically importing ninformation from the irs. But overall a major source of hassle and confusion. We can do much better and it remaining heard hadals are completely surmountable. Various groups have offered alternative plans including myself. Theres more than one path to meaningful and effective simp luification as longs it it achieves two goals. First, minimizing hassle and second, maximizing transparency. This leads me to the following recommendations. First we should base pelawards on a limited number of data from the irs so no separate financial application is necessary. Second provide institutions with a efc or simulated efc. Allowing students to plan for a multiyear course of study without needing to reapply multiple time times. Sums are on a post card that schools, counselors can post and distribute. And finally use irs information to communicate to Prospective Students about their likely pell eligibili eligibility. I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Scott clayton. Mr. Draeger, welcome. Thank you. In 2014 senator alexander, you came and spoke to several thousand administrators and proposed a twoquestion fafsa. And that created quite a dust up amongst our membership. Not because they dont wants to make the application simpler but when you look at the amount of grant aid delivered every year in this country, 40 billion whiches from the federal government. 58 billion of it comes from institutions. And another 25 billion come from state and outside scholarship providers. The context i want to paint is there are other entities awarding significant amount of grant aid that have a interest in doing two things. One, which i think were pretty much all in alinement on is making it as easy as possible and that includes making the verification process as easy as possible. But the second piece is making sure we have accurate data to effect the financial strength of every family. At its core needbased grants come down to a few basic principals. The first is this. The primary responsibility to pay for college is that of the student and family and those who cant afford should. And second, is where they dont have the means to pay for college we sld a web of grant providers, ifcludes it federal, state and inhad stugzs and scholarship providers and we ask them to complete some sort of application to assess their need. The unifying concept of the fafsa is they could try and rely on one form so we dont have fragments of multiple forms throughout it process. So the trade off weve been talking about for years is one, how many questions do we ask and as few as possible to make it easy and two, how accurately do we want to determine the applicants strength . I think the good news is a lot has changed since this conversation started and after convening a group of practicing aid directors from all different types of schools and where weve come technologically, i think we can break out of this trade off weve been grappling with for years. Our proposal and it aligns well with other independent proposals relies on existing data bases of information that would prepopulate or autofill for applicants providing verified information so students and families would no longver to go through a arduous verification process with the school. Our first pathway would be for low if hadcome students who kp from backgrounds where they may not make enough money to file tax returns. These families probably already qualify for specific means tested federal benefits like snap and ssi. In those inhadstances, its a matter of linking data bases to qualify for full pell eligibility. Those are your 1040 without schedules, 1040 ez or a. They are all the information we need to determine their pell eligibility and in most instances school and state eligibility. So if we could prepopulate or import that from the tax return, we could dramatically reduce it number of questions they provide and they dont have significant assets as demonstrated boo itheir tax return. The third pathway is for those with complicated tax returns and thereby complicated financial situations. We dont think its necessarily an issue to have a slightly more complicated form for families with complicated financials. That would be demonstrated by schedules with business income, Real Estate Investments or other types of if vestments a lot of other peleligible students dont have. Still, we could get the musdwlofmajority of it information from the tax reform. If we start moving towa verified data up front. One point about simplicity and complexity. Creating an application process i just described would produce some complexity but not for the applicants. Thats the part were focused on income and tax forms and transferring data and databases thats all back end complexity. I dont know we ought to skew complexity at the back end if at the same time it maintains integrity and accuracy on the front end and ultimately makes its easier for applicants. I provided a handout that show the pathways i just described. Thank you. Dr. Rubin, rum. Chairman alexander, Ranking Member murray and members of the committee. Thank you for allowing me to discuss the fafsa. These are my own feelings. It allows millions of students to apply for Financial Aid as my colleagues have shown and provides significant barriers for more students, mostly low generation students and its to provide for those who need it but only those who need it. Policymakers have made some progress to simplifying it, adding skip logic, and using the irs data retrieval tool and basing awards on prior year income. Theres still work to be done. The application process is still cumbersome and the complex formula makes it difficult for students to know their eligibility before they apply for college. It increases the effectiveness of broadening Educational Opportunities and especially important for lowincome students least likely to attend college and could benefit the most from an improved student aid application system. My written testimony includes fafsa simfication proposals including those of my colleagues sitting to my right made over the last few years. This is based on earlier work where we made applestoapples comparison of costs and distribution of benefits of different options. Some proposals like the fast act would ask a few questions to calculate pell grant awards. Others like fafsa calculates pell and other aids but simplify the existing system on technology and income Tax Information. They all highlight the possibility of an easier system. I believe it is time to decouple the process of awarding pell grants from the rest of the Financial Aid award system. However, it would still be important to maintain a universal federal application from other types of aide. Five following steps. First determine pell eligibility using just a few pieces of information, such as family income, family size and family relationships. Two, make pell Grant Eligibility an application available through an app or tool accessed using a smartphone or tablet not just the computer. I think were beyond the postcard phase where people are comfortable using their phone to figure these things out. Maintain a universal Application Form that eliminates the need for applicants to view questions they just dont understand. Including far fewer questions to be downloaded directly from tax returns. This probably means we have to change the irs data retrieval system to make simfication possible by providing an indicator for the presence of business or capital income that would trigger additional questions about a students wealth. A simplified pell program would make it more predictable for lowincome students, even those attending college. Many of the nuances can be met by providing information about Family Structure and changing aid formulas. We can differentiate between a two person family with two adults, a parent and a child. I would go to a three factor system. I would suggest providing pell grants after answering three simple questions. What is your family income. How many people are in your family and are you or one of your family members a depend child. And i suggest a federal system for accessing other aid so we dont return to a system where students need to fill out a myriad of forms at each state level for the application process. Im excited to si the committee continue this important work i hope will lead to more students, especially first generation or lowincome students attending college. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and i look forward to answering any questions you have. Thank you very much for a very interesting testimony. Well now go to five minute rounds of questions. I will step down the hall and introduce a witness a president ial nominee at another hearing. I should be back in a few minutes. Senator murray agreed to chair the committee during that time. Senator murkowski has the first questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I agree. Very interesti. We must do more to make sure we do not put in place barriers. I appreciate the recognition theres a difference between a form that is annoying and just kind of a pain to fill out and something that is truly a barrier. I hear far far too often that it is a barrier, that you have young people that look at it and say, i cant even go there. They bring their parents into the picture and they too give up. I do think its important we look to ways to not only simplify, but to your point, miss rubin, lets come into todays world. The fact were talking about postcards, if i were to ask my son to mail a postcard i dont know where hed find a stamp. The reality that we are doing so much on our smartphones, this ought not be one of those where we say we just cant do it. I think, as were looking to making it simpler,lates also use the tools young people are using, which is your device, your phone there. I wanted to ask just a little bit. Theres been good discussion about the verification steps that need to go into place. I think we can all agree we need to work to address that more readily. But dr. Mccallum, you had mentioned the efforts that we could make to work with young people earlier on so that they dont get discouraged, even before they get to a more truncated process hopefully were going to put into place. You mentioned precollegiate outreach. When we have talked about healthcare and enrollment in healthcare plans when the aca was advanced, there was a role designated for navigators. We know within the Healthcare System you can have a Patient Navigator that can help you move through the system. Do we need i understand that we have counselors in our schools, although in my view, not enough. Do we need navigators or can we make this simple enough we dont need to do that, we shouldnt need a navigator. Senator murkowski. Navigators are a wonderful idea. The Completion Rates came from a navigator program. I hadnt quite thought of doing it in high school. Certainly, when we have focus groups in high school that is one of their big issues, they need somebody to fill out the form and hold their hand and navigate them into college. Another program we have found very successful getting students into college who otherwise wouldnt have done so is dual enrollment, offering credit bearing courses to High School Students. We have found an increase in college of going rates of 23 Percentage Points even after adjusting and assuring that you have the same academic preparation and same income levels of those students. We have a far higher rate than those who have not. What we call focus centers in the Denver Public schools, where you have to go in and use their services to apply for fafsa and as well to apply for other scholarships and the current enrollment have all proven to be good success stories. Thank you. I want to thank you for your testimony here today i think is very helpful and instructive. Thank you for your determinedness, your efforts to stick with a process that was not easy, that probably made its easier for you to quit at every turn and you did not. You graduated. Congratulations to you. I think youre an extraordinary role model for so many. Would it have been helpful to you prior to even considering college to have something at the High School Level that would have allowed you to more readily move towards it . You sound to me to be the type of young woman that is going to get around all the odds but you also know others that were in a similar situation. How can we make its easier . Thank you for that question. For me, it was a little different because i was a part of a program in high school. I was part of the upward Bound Program that really exposed me to Higher Education, which really gave me that drive to pursue Higher Education. However, i think the point of contact should be put in place on the college level, going into your first year. Because for me, i had the grasp program, which is a program that works around helping High School Students to fill out your fafsa and get your documentations done. I had that in high school and when it came to college i didnt have those resources. There wasnt a contact person. Coming into vcu as a transfer student i didnt know how to navigate that. It was different going from a private school to public institution. To me, it would be more point of contact at the universities for students with unstable housing and homelessness. Very good. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to thank senator murray for yielding to me because i have to run off to do something else. In the last conversation, my friend from alaska really put her finger on something so important. When i was superintendent of Public Schools we had a local couple he was a graduate of lincoln high school. The Marcus Family created something called the denver scholarship foundation. What they said was no kid that graduated from high school in denver would be barred from going to college because of finances, we would find a way. And in order to be eligible they had to apply for two other scholarships and in order to do that they had to fill out the fafsa form. Pretty quickly we figured out that was a huge pain point. And we had to hire people to take people through these forms. People listening to this at home, this is not a form beyond the skill of our kids to do because theyre poor or because theyre homeless, this form is ridiculous. Miss williams pointed to some of the most egregious part of this form relates to homeless children. My memory is there are three different questions asked to tell you whether or not youre homeless. You get to a certain point of the form youre halfway through, youre homeless, you can go to a simpler part of the form. We do need people to help but also as we heard today in this testimony we need to simplify this form. I wanted to ask and there has been discussing today earlier about the concept of a tradeoff the idea by simplifying the form we risk using data granularity and giving aid to students that dont need it. I believe the risk lies in the other direction, the current process complicated intimidates talented capable students letting bureaucratic red tape stand between students and Higher Education is it own kind of tradeoff, one we accepted far too long in my view. I wonder if you could talk what the effects of simplification are in Financial Aid awards. Most students see a drastic change in the award using the formula. Questions about untaxed income alter the awards . Thank you for that question. Just briefly i want to note on the postcard thing, purely conceptual. Lets make it on a smartphone. The idea is get the amount of information down so you can explain it simply to people. We have, mr. Chairman, even more unity than when you left. With respect to simplification and how it will affect Financial Aid, one of the most surprising things when we first started doing this reach in 2006, 2007, was how little so many of these questions matter, especially assets, so complicated for families to answer. Its not something asked on the tax form, its not something most families have a single number, you have to do a lot of work to understand what counts and doesnt count. When it comes down to it most of that information doesnt get used for anything because the form does exclude home equity, does exclude Retirement Savings and on top of that it excludes another chunk, higher than the level most families have. I think some of the worry is understandable, actually when you do these simulations it turns out to not matter very much. You can get down to eight questions for the vast majority, 45, 80, 90 most replicate the pell program and esc, used for a wider range of purposes within a fairly narrow wrong. 500 of the original amount. Ufcs used for state aid and institutional said, i completely understand the schools are using that for other purposes. It is true some simplification does make a difference for efc applications, above the need needed to distribute. I think institutions there at have a lot of their own aid to distribute need to have accuracy. A lot of them are already using a separate form. Im not sure how many schools are in that window where they need the extra complexity but not already using this other form. I would just add i think it would be important i would separate the two, right, might be a little bit of splitting the baby. I think if we had pell grant awards based on a couple questions people understand that would be step one and might encourage them to keep going and put in the other information. We dont want to return to a world people are filling out different forms for different states and colleges. Having something easy at the beginning but triggers them to go on and fill out the more important other questions would be useful, i think. Im out of time or over time. I wanted to go ahead, senator bennet. I wanted to make one other observation you and the Ranking Member talked about the beginning of this hearing, we you what that means is today the gap between people that are living in poverty and the people that are not is greater than it was for people born in the 1960s. That is intollerable. It is my hope that the other work we do can begin to answer that question or help us answer that question. It is not a place where kids should be in a world where we have discovered that it is so important to being able to fulfill the employment needs of of this economy. Thank you for being here mr. Chairman and for your leadership. Thank you senator bennett, senator murray. Thank you. I want to start with you. We are so happy youre here today and want to congratulate you on what you accomplished. I wanted to ask you once you were able to get through, what kinds of financial pressures did you experience that might inform us about the entire process in. Thank you for that question. So for me i think the financial pressure was having to work full time while being a full time student to take care of those basic needs like food and hygiene, products and things of that nature. It covered room and board. Out that point of contact i didnt know how to get in contact with the other services i needed at the university. Think about housing and how much it costs to live on coampus. So because i didnt qualify it was having to think about how much im in debt now with loans. Thats how i got through college was taking out loans. And it wasnt just your tuition it was all of the other costs to get through it . Yes. Thank you. And in your written testimony they were not the only obstacles you you faced ch talk to me about the other kind of support you wish you had had that would have helped you. I needed more services that wasnt there. It was trying to find my niche and having to advocate and tell me people are pushing back once i asked for help. And. And i had a group of College Students. I asked how many of you work and go to school and they all raised their hands. I asked how many of you have one job. I said two . Three . I think we have to recognize the full scope of the cost of education. So thank you. You talked about the back end of fafsa. It doesnt end once they get through the initial hoops of filling out that form. There are additional hurdles including verification and finding enough to help students with Financial Aid questions. I think its important that our committee think about some of these issues in the context of simplify case. It relies on double and triple checking from their tax returns. What are the challenges with verification for community College Students. [ inaudible ]. In terms of what we end up doing, we have to contact the students. We have to prepare the forms, make sure they are accurately completing the forms. We have to advise them what is an acceptable documentation, update any differences they had input versus what we are finding in the verification forms and then once the corrected data is returned to the processer an additional review needs to be made from that. It is a pretty big process so much so that students are feeling it is a big barrier. It takes 25 of our time. Not just because of our work but because of your work. Absolutely. And what kind of wrap around services would be needed in a world if we simplified it . Far less. In particular with we are prepopulating with the irs data with data we already have in the federal government. So they didnt have to contact the student as often . Correct. It would be accurate data for those students who are filing or families who filed a federal income tax form. So if we could reduce the amount of time on the verification we could put it in so many needed Student Services like the ones you were requesting where you can have a navigator showing students how to find other resources to help them. You agreed it would be important do . Absolutely. On verification if im a student at one of your campuses and you contact me about verifying do i get my money or do i have to wait until its verified . Thats my understanding too. Or you would be putting it at risk to return the money. So you have students scrambling to go college and all of a sudden instead of having their bills paid they might have to wait october, november and december. It can be imported to the federal aid application. Would it reduce the need . What youre doing is comparing what you put on did you want to Say Something else about verification . No. Im good, thanks. You mentioned if say 90 of those who filled out federal income taxes didnt take any itemized deduction would that create a simpler federal aid form . Yeah. So our proposal is those that dont have scheduled we could get almost all of the information we need right off the front of the tax form. I suppose it would simplify the process. Basically youre suggesting and i believe others are too that we separate out the pell grant and ask two or three questions. And you requested fied what they were. I also think if we had people figure out their pell grant earlier. Those three questions were what . It started with what is in the but what are they . What is your family income, what is your family size and what your Family Structure is. So the first two you already reported to the federal government. And the third is part of it. So basically youre suggesting take three pieces of information that the taxpayer already report today the federal government, move it out and make a decision about whether youre eligible for a pell grant. In what a mount . It could be 500 to 1,500 something dollars. We could put in a formula. If i gave you the answer i would come up with a number. It would be how you compare to the federal poverty line. Do you agree with that . I agree with most of that. So if i know somebody has Real Estate Investments but their agi is zero you need that for a pell grant . Not necessarily for a pell grant. For pell i did ask you what you didnt agree with. You were answering my question. Be you you would agree if it is 30 or 40 we could identify the three questions or so . Yes. Thank you for this hearing and to all of the witnesses for your testimony and senator bennett for working on this for so long. I want to thank i want to take a moment to agree with senator murray. It is so important. In minnesota students graduate with owing more than 30,000 and across the nation 44 million americans are working hard to pay off their student debt. Thank you for your testimony. The tradeoff is a great way of talking about this and understanding it. Your testimony you mentioned that we can rely more on technology after students submit the fafsa to achieve simplicity and ak cure si. Would this help nontraditional students . It would definitely help nontraditional students which is a vast majority of whom we serve. Many of our students work. Simplify case is important so they can access all of the aid they have available to them. Yes, we do rely on certain eligibility in order to distribute aid. We will adapt to whatever the new system is. I mean that is something that we have control over. If we are able to understand the income thresholds it is not something that is set in stone. So for me, from my standpoint the more simplistic the better. We need to simplify fafsa for students and their families. We also need help in better understanding the Financial Aid award letters that they receive from colleges after they submit them. How would a uniformed letter help them better understand the true cost of college . I would say it will help, one, i know for my experience in particular i think if i understood what unsubsidized loans and subsidized maybe i could consider finding other grants to help pay for college and like you stated, it does not break down what are grants, loans and what other loans and grant that is you may qualify for, so i believe that that is understood and the Financial Aid package then one, you can like you stated that you can make a decision based on your needs. However for me it wasnt a situation until i got to bcu. It was more of a better understanding because i had been in the Higher Education institute for a year. A lot of students dont and they assume when they see unsubsidized loans that it has interestened it will cost you more on the back end. I honestly do not understand how ke can sit here and discuss simplify case as Congressional Republicans are as we speak jamming through a giant tax give away to billionaires and corporations that would make college even more unaffordable for millions of americans. I want to focus on whats happening in congress this week. One that passed the house would eliminate the Tax Deduction for student Loan Interest payments. The cost that students borrow would be 21 billion. Would this tax change help or hurt students who borrow money . The elimination of above the line deductions would make college more expensive. Do you agree that this tax change would hurt your students that have to borrow money to pay for college is this. Yes. It would make it less affordable to go to dleg and pay for loans. I would note that 58 of our students do graduate with zero debt. For those that have debt it would make it more costly. All right. Another provision would repeal Tax Exemption on waivers that cover graduate school tuition. The cost to students who get tuition waivers would be 5. 4 billion. Youre a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Would this help or hurt graduate students . So the work we have done in analyzing the house bill the changes in making college and graduate school more expensive would hurt glraduate students. Between that and treating Employer Benefits will make it harder for people to attain. So do you agree . Yes. As a general rule are doubly punitive. Thank you. According to an analysis requested by Ranking Member patty murray from congresss joint Committee Overall the republican tax bill that passed the house would cost College Students an estimated 71 billion over the next ten years. And the senate bill is projected to add more than a trillion to the National Debt which could lead to more cuts in pell grants and to higher student loan costs down the road. We could totally forgive every penny of Student Loan Debt with the amount of money congressional reps are using and still have money left over. Every penny of Student Loan Debt. They dont plan to cut it to lower the cost of college. Nope. They proposed use the money to give gigantic tax give aways to rich people and big corporations. I do not understand how we can focus on helping students access federal student aid while ignoring the republican plan to drive up the cost of college for millions of families, a plan that could come up for a vote this week. Thank you mr. Chairman. Of. Thank you senator warren. Senator murray, do you have additional questions . I do. I am deeply concerned about the impact on low income students of the policies you just put forward. We have income in equality. We know low and middle income people earn wages and higher income tend to build investments. It will have a greater impact. I appreciate the comments. I think it has been a very productive conversation today. I hope we can do that to the Higher Education process and Work Together to have hearings that really help us focus on that. Thank you. Thank you. You have other comments or questions . Is. Thank you mr. Chairman. I would like to associate myself with senator warrens remarks. It will hurt students in so many of the ways senator warren underscored. The give away to wealthy people in the country and the provisions that senator warren spoke about will have an enormous effect on students. I think that i would like to associate myself with her remarks. Thank you. This has been very helpful. Our Committee Staff will want to follow up with you and get your specific suggestions as we develop a bill as part of a larger package to reauthorize the Higher Education act. One thing i have noticed is that some times if we take or time, which some times people dont like, that just by bringing up a subject and provoking a discussion we can make some progress. We made a lot of progress since what we call the prior year change you could file your you dont have to file your application before you pay your income tax in other words. So that was a common sense change and the Obama Administration just did that. We also worked with president oba obama. I think we all have a better understanding of what we are doing. Let me see if i can summarize a little bit. The suggestion has been made and that one approach would be to separate the pell grant which would be 30 or 40 of the 20 million applications that are filled out every year. That is a lot of applications. Ask three questions, all of which could be incorporated from Internal Revenue service and let an applicant know if youre eligible for a pell grant and with that same sort of procedure you could let a person know that before they are admitted to college so they can use that plun to shop around. You can let them know in 7th, 8th or 9th grade the average pell grant is about the same amount as the average Community College tu wigts. Most always talked about the expense about going college. Thats important to note. Ill get to the rest of it after that. With todays technology and the timing of the prior year im left with the question if we can get more data with the tax return that the school doesnt have to follow up with the student on why not just do that . If we want to use a separate one i think its a fine suggestion. This is hearing on the Financial Aid process is on cspan. Org. Well leave the last few minutes and take you live to capitol hill. The senate Health Education and Labor Committee is holding a he hearing it should get underway in a couple of moments here