Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The 153 questions on the current federal college aid form drives millions of families to just give up. The Obama administration wants to change that.

President Barack Obama wants to make the form much more user-friendly.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the goal is to boost college enrollment among low- and middle-income students.

The administration plans to shorten and streamline the online application and create a web application to use tax data families have already submitted to the IRS. It also plans to ask Congress to pass legislation that removes more than half of the financial questions.

The American Council on Education, in a 2004 report, estimated that 1.5 million students probably would have been awarded Pell Grants had they applied for them.