During the financial aid season, we often hear from families and some school administrators about the complexity of financial aid applications. “Why is the form so complicated? It’s more intrusive than completing tax forms. Is all that really necessary?”
Indeed, this is a common feeling whenever people are asked to provide personal financial information in certain filing processes, such as for mortgages, tax returns, and financial aid. We can blame it on credit cards. As credit card applications have been pretty much reduced to “How much do you earn?” (and look where that's gotten us), the expectation for shorter applications for everything is growing. As we consider simplifying the application, what are some of the key issues at play? Why is simplification not so simple?
First and foremost, the application has to be designed to help institutions gather the right information to make the best eligibility decision. Financial aid budgets are too large and the implications of poor stewardship in financial aid management are too great to sacrifice needed information to do the job right in favor of a simplified process.
It is fair to ask organizations to simplify applications that include unnecessary questions or questions designed for a purpose other than determining need. In examining the Parents’ Financial Statement (PFS), we ask schools (for whose benefit the form is designed, remember) and consult with our advisory task force of practitioners and school leaders, to identify such useless information. In my 10-plus years of assessing this issue at NAIS, there has not been clear consensus on what questions need to be eliminated to simplify the form. Most believe that the existing questions are the right ones to ask.
In fact, we usually get requests asking for more information on the PFS. For example, each year we consider a few requests to add “race or ethnicity” on the PFS because it would be a convenient way for schools to track it. While I agree that this could yield useful information, it has nothing to do with determining need and the application itself shouldn’t lead families or schools to think that it does. Of course, the information that is gathered can be, and should be, used for other research-based purposes, but ultimately it is not designed to be a research tool.
I think it’s common to equate “long” with “complicated.” Just because a form has a lot of questions doesn’t mean it’s difficult to complete, just possibly more time consuming than if it had fewer questions. Why is it so long? Over the years, the PFS has evolved into a longer document based on schools’ collective requests to collect information that they wanted, even if it were not used in the SSS methodology (such as insurance policies and where other children were going to school).
Creating a simpler form would require eliminating questions that schools themselves have asked SSS to collect. If the questions are the right ones and if only the right ones are asked, then it really doesn’t matter if it’s one question or one hundred, if those giving out the dollars are satisfied that we’ve gotten it right. This challenge shouldn’t solely center as much around simplifying the form by reducing the number of questions. That approach could lead to a less effective application.
So how to make it simpler for families without sacrificing what schools need to gather? We think this can be done with a focus on using web technology to take the questions we have and dynamically rearrange them based on family profiles or answers to other questions, creating an “EZ version” on the fly.
We've created the PFS Online with adaptive components, such as asking an applicant if he or she owns a home. If the applicant says no, then questions related to home value, equity, etc. will not appear. The same is true regarding divorced/separated parents, and farm or business owners, making the form as long or as short as is necessary for each family. Some other ideas in the works for expanding this “family-based” approach include linking to other financial sources (like IRS or tax software imports), and pre-populating entries to make renewal applications easier.
In financial aid assessment, a shorter form isn’t necessarily a better one. But a better method of getting more people to provide necessary information easily and quickly is a worthy goal that we continually strive to meet. The primary consideration, though, must always be that the form best serve schools’ needs for decision making, not parents’ need for convenience. Finding the right balance between the two remains an ongoing process (challenge?).
What do you think we can do to simplify the application process for families? What have you done at your school to make it easier for families to apply for financial aid?
