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EQUITY  March 2007

EQUITY March 2007

Subject:

Fwd: Spellings Introduces 'Fafsa4caster' to Give Students Earlier Dataon Federal-Aid Eligibility

From:

Rudy Redmond <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Retention & Graduation Issues Concerning Minorities in Higher Education <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 07:52:21 -0400

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (79 lines)

>>> John Matlock <[log in to unmask]> 3/22/2007 5:08 AM >>>

Spellings Introduces 'Fafsa4caster' to Give Students Earlier Data on 
Federal-Aid Eligibility
By LAUREN SMITH

Washington

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced on Wednesday a 
new online tool that will help students and their families better 
financially plan for college before a student's senior year of high 
school.
The "Fafsa4caster," as the tool is called, will calculate a student's 
eligibility for federal student aid, including Pell Grants and 
subsidized loans.
Using the new tool will also reduce the time it takes to complete the 
online Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, when 
students are actually ready to apply for aid. Information will be 
transferred from the forecaster to the larger form to pre-populate 
about half of its 100-plus questions.
The Fafsa is the basic application form used by the federal and state 
governments and most colleges to determine eligibility for financial 
aid, and reducing its complexity is a long-sought goal.
In a conference call with reporters on Wednesday morning, Ms. 
Spellings stressed the new tool's value for families and high-school 
students as they plan how they will pay for college.
"It's important that we help families do that much earlier than their 
senior year," the secretary said. "They need to start looking at this 
in their junior year and even before."
The federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which 
reported to Ms. Spellings last September, found a "crying need" to 
provide families with federal student-aid information quicker, she 
said, and the Fafsa4caster is the department's first step toward 
dealing with that issue.
The Fafsa4caster "will be used by millions of students and families, 
and it's an important step forward," Ms. Spellings said.
The program will forecast the amount of federal assistance a student 
qualifies for, but not state aid. A later version, set to be released 
in September, will provide case examples of what potential total-aid 
packages and eligibility would look like at various postsecondary 
institutions.
Non-Web-based alternatives for collecting information for the Fafsa 
for students and families without access to the Internet are also 
being explored. Those include a "tele-Fafsa" pilot program in which 
students can call an 800 number and have a customer-service 
representative from the Education Department enter their information 
over the phone.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of 
the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, 
commended Secretary Spellings for developing the Fafsa4caster.
"This tool appears to be a good first step," Mr. Kennedy said in a 
written statement, "but we should do even more to simplify the Fafsa 
as much as possible and make the student-aid application process 
easier for students and families."
Secretary Spellings mirrored that sentiment. "While this is an 
important first step, this is not the only step," she said. "We have 
a financial-aid process that is confusing and can be improved, and 
more-comprehensive reform is also in order."
In a similar drive to facilitate the Fafsa, on Tuesday, members of 
both the House of Representatives and the Senate introduced bills 
that would allow students to file a "pre-Fafsa" during their junior 
year, and cut the number of questions on the Fafsa form in half by 
using financial information from income-tax returns (The Chronicle, 
March 21).
The Fafsa4caster will be available April 1, and a Spanish version 
will be available April 29.
-- 

JOHN MATLOCK,  ([log in to unmask])
Associate Vice-Provost
Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic
Affairs
and  Director, Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives

The University of Michigan
3009 SAB Building
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1316
Phone: (734) 936-1055   Fax: (734) 764-3595
        For scheduling: contact Carol Williams ([log in to unmask])

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