University Business - September 2010 - (Page 26)

FINANCIAL AID The Burden of Veriﬁcation Higher costs for colleges, more barriers for students By Haley Chitty F INANCIAL AID PROFESSION als have asserted for some time that the federal regulation requiring higher education institutions to verify certain information on some students’ aid applications creates additional burdens for low-income students and ﬁnancial aid oﬃces. ese assertions were recently conﬁrmed by a report from e Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) that chronicles the impact of veriﬁcation on students and ﬁnancial aid oﬃces at 13 community colleges in California. e report was released as the U.S. Department of Education worked to ﬁnalize a dramatic overhaul of the veriﬁcation regulations. While the department’s goal is to update and streamline the veriﬁcation process, many believe its veriﬁcation proposal will accomplish the opposite by increasing barriers to higher education for low-income students and also increasing administrative costs for institutions. terim disbursement to a student, if the institution doesn’t have conﬂicting information about the student before veriﬁcation is complete. e school is liable if veriﬁcation is not resolved or if an overpayment resulting from corrected data is not repaid by the student. THE REPORT e TICAS veriﬁcation report “After the FAFSA: How Red Tape Can Prevent Eligible Students from Receiving Aid,” suggests that additional veriﬁcation requirements can deter students from completing the aid application process. e report found that only 2 percent of students at the 13 community colleges who were selected for veriﬁcation became ineligible for Pell Grants. However, the students who were selected for veriﬁcation were less likely to receive grants than those who were not selected. On average at these schools, about a third of all aid applicants who appeared eligible for federal Pell Grants did not receive this aid. e report also features interviews with ﬁnancial aid administrators and a student survey. e interviews and survey illustrate the negative eﬀects the veriﬁcation process can have on students. “Some students just can’t get through the process,” said an administrator from one college included in the study. e study also quantiﬁes the burden on these 13 community colleges. e institutions in the report together spent Haley Chitty is director of communications at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, www.nasfaa.org. universitybusiness.com Students selected for veriﬁcation were less likely to receive grants than those not selected. institutionally-selected applications do not count toward the 30 percent cap. Currently, schools must verify ﬁve data elements ﬂagged by the department: 1. Adjusted Gross Income 2. U.S. taxes paid 3. Untaxed income (which may include multiple sources) 4. Household size 5. Number of family members in college Students selected for veriﬁcation must take additional steps before they are determined eligible for aid. ey must document speciﬁc income and demographic information from their applications. Once an institution has gathered the required documents from the family and compared them to the application data, it may choose to exercise an allowable tolerance option rather than require reprocessing. e school is liable for any miscalculation it makes in determining the applicability of tolerances. An institution may also make an in- CURRENT REGULATIONS e veriﬁcation requirement is designed to catch fraudulent and inaccurate information on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to prevent students from receiving aid they are not eligible for. e department has a system to identify error-prone FAFSAs for campus oﬃces to verify. Currently, an institution may cap the number of department-ﬂagged applications it veriﬁes at 30 percent of its federal aid applicant pool. If fewer than 30 percent are ﬂagged, the institution does not need to verify more than the amount ﬂagged. If a school selects applications to verify in addition to those ﬂagged, the 26 | September 2010 http://www.nasfaa.org http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2010

University Business - September 2010
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Financial Aid
Sense of Place
Internet Technology
Approaching Admissions Today
Three to Degree
Have College Brands Delivered on Their Promise?
Honoring Efficiency
EduComm 2010 Roundup
View from the Summit
Independent Outlook
What's New
End Note

University Business - September 2010