FAFSA

Mandating students complete the application, the thinking goes, would boost college enrollment in part by boosting perceptions of affordability. Helping make ...

Having tax day focus on paying for college would set the stage for private scholarship providers and even states themselves to align their applications and processes into a singular national financial aid day. Students and families thinking about college could check a box on whatever version of the 1040 they file and trigger a FAFSA worksheet that would automatically get transferred by the Treasury Department to the Education Department. That ends up being a recipe for disaster to low-income and adult students who are more likely today to fill out the FAFSA after state dollars and deadlines have passed. Those who file for up to a 6-month extension could use this same form or wait until filing, but even these filers would still have their form completed by October of the same year, putting them amongst the earliest FAFSA filers today. It also makes the benefit dependent on the luck of living in a state that actually requires it. Targeting high school students ignores that the majority of college students on campus today are not the straight-from-high-school crowd.