Major Changes Coming To the FAFSA

For the millions of college students around the country that apply for financial aid, 2016 will bring some major changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. More commonly referred to as the FAFSA, the federal student aid application will have both new features and new procedures designed to make the process faster and easier for students and families to use.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced these changes in September while on a trip through Iowa. According to National Public Radio reporter Cory Turner, Duncan said at the announcement, “Today, we’re announcing an easier, earlier FAFSA.”

The changes to the FAFSA will involve what tax information is used, a new method for signing into the application, and even a future change in when students can begin applying for aid. To get a better, more in-depth understanding of these changes and how they will impact Frostburg State University students, The Bottom Line spoke to Angela Hovatter, FSU’s Director of Student Financial Aid.

The first two major changes to the FAFSA, Hovatter explained, will take effect on January 1, 2016, when students can begin applying for federal student aid for the 2016-2017 academic year.   The most immediate change that students and parents will notice is that the FAFSA will no longer require students to sign in using a federal PIN number. Instead, students will create a Federal Student Aid ID, made up of a username and password.

This FSA ID will replace the PIN number for use signing into the FAFSA application and other relevant webpages hosted by the United States Department of Education. According to Ms. Hovatter “there’s about six to seven different steps that you have to go through [to apply for and create a new Federal Student Aid ID]… students need to be aware of what [the Department of Education] did and how it works.”

An official Federal Student Aid instructional form, which walks students and parents step-by-step though the FSA ID creation process, can be found on the Frostburg State website at the bottom of the financial aid homepage. The form stresses the easy and efficient nature of this process, as well as the importance of not sharing your FSA ID.

The Office of Student Financial aid will also be hosting an installment of FSU’s “Academic Enrichment Series” to teach students how to create their FSA ID. The program will be held Thursday, October 29, from 2:00pm-3:00pm in Gira CCIT room 127A. Hovatter said that with all the new changes, her office “just wants to go out there and tell students what’s going on.”

The second major FAFSA change that students can expect when they log in on January 1 is that they will be using the same tax records they used on last year’s application. This is because the FAFSA will begin using a “prior-prior year” tax recording system. Student will apply for federal aid using taxes that were filed two calendar years prior to the start of the academic year for which they are applying for aid.

For example, when students apply January 1, 2016, for federal aid for the 2016-2017 school year, they will use taxes filed in 2014. The next time they file, for the 2017-2018 school year, students and parents will use 2015 tax records.

This change from one-year-old to two-year-old taxes was done to address countless cases where students could not get prior year tax records in time to apply for the FAFSA. “There are a number of students that have… issues that cause them not to be able to get their tax return, [The Department of Education] is trying to make it easier so students can obtain that information readily and fast” explained Angela Hovatter.

One goal of switching to the prior-prior year system is that, in theory, millions more students will be able to directly import their online tax records straight from the IRS website onto the FAFSA application. This would be a huge time saving advantage for students and parents that should lower the risk of making mistakes when filing for financial aid.

The third and final change for the FAFSA will come when students apply for federal aid for the 2017-2018 academic school year. Instead of having to wait until January 2017 to file the FAFSA, the application process will open a few months earlier, in October 2016. This change was implemented to give students more time to apply for aid and make decisions about the affordability of the upcoming academic year.

While Hovatter noted that the FAFSA changes will mandate some adjustments on the part of her office to accommodate the new tax reporting and application timeline, she believes these reforms will be positive overall, stating, “I think it’s going to be good for students and filing. It’s going to make things easier for students when they file, it’s going to make the process for students more streamlined.”

Hovatter will be attending the annual Federal Student Aid Conference, held December 1- December 4, where she hopes to get an even more in-depth understanding of the new changes. The event usually draws over 6,000 financial aid professionals from around the country.

International news agency Reuters reported earlier this year that the White House’s efforts to improve the FAFSA were a response to national student loan debt totaling over $1.2 trillion, and an estimated 2 million college students who didn’t apply for federal aid for which they were eligible. The White House said in a statement “Over the next several years, the simpler FAFSA filing process could encourage hundreds of thousands of additional students to apply for and claim the aid they are eligible for.”

Students should expect further details about FAFSA changes to come by email sometime during December or over winter break. Anyone with questions can call the FSU Office of Financial Aid at (301) 687-4301, or visit the office located on campus in 114 Pullen Hall.