U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) led a bipartisan contingent in calling on the U.S. Department of Education to ensure America’s higher education students have uninterrupted access to federal financial aid.
“We request that the Department of Education immediately implement a mid-cycle patch to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to protect students from delays and reduce the risk that students will not receive the federal financial aid for which they are eligible,” wrote Sen. Collins, along with seven other senators, including U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), in a Nov. 18 letter sent to U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Sen. Collins and her colleagues noted their concern with the department’s “lack of action” to ensure that the current federal student financial aid cycle is not disrupted by required changes the U.S. Treasury Department made to the 1040 tax form, which has been shortened with the information moved to six new tax forms.
“Due to inadequate coordination between the Treasury, the Department of Education, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the IRS Data Retrieval Tool was not modified to automate the transfer of data on one of these six new tax forms — the Schedule 1 — into the FAFSA for the 2020-21 academic year, which went online October 1, 2019,” according to their letter. “As a result, students are currently having to self-report this tax data on the FAFSA form.”
Sen. Collins and the lawmakers pointed out that the Education Department previously has updated FAFSA questions in the middle of an application cycle, a “patching process” that doesn’t require any action on the part of applicants, state grant agencies or institutions of higher education.
“Simplifying the financial aid process and FAFSA form has long been a bipartisan objective, and everyone should be united in addressing this issue as soon as possible,” the senators wrote.