Mike Enzi: “Federal student aid is a tangled web of tax, grant, loan, and savings programs with rules and regulations that are so…”

“Federal student aid is a tangled web of tax, grant, loan, and savings programs with rules and regulations that are so complicated, many prospective students don't know that they really can afford to go to college. Families have to fight their way through a maze of paperwork. We have talked about this several times, the difficulty of the present financial aid form. Nearly 10 million prospective aid recipients must file that form each year, and submitting the form is the only way for families to determine their eligibility for Federal grants and loans. The free application for federal financial aid is longer and more complicated than a Federal tax form. It has 5 pages and 127 questions, so it is longer than the form 1040EZ, which is 1 page and 37 questions for filing your taxes, or the form 1040A, which is 2 pages and 83 questions. It is comparable to the form 1040, with 2 pages and 118 questions. The contrast between the tax forms and the financial aid forms is especially informative. With a third of the financial aid form questions and a fifth of its pages, the IRS captures the information needed to determine tax liability for the very population targeted by the Pell grant.”