Student Financial Aid News

From Inside Higher Ed:

Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives on Wednesday formally introduced legislation to restructure the federal student aid programs and signaled their intention to move with lightning speed to pass it. The Committee on Education and Labor announced that it would take up the $87 billion legislation next Tuesday, and given the strong Democratic majority on the panel, as well as in Congress, passage is assured.

Commentary

Any changes made to the student loan program and federal student loans are expected to take effect July 1, 2010. We’ll see how the bill to eliminate FFEL fares in the Senate, but the House is going to clear it.

From the Chronicle:

When President Obama unveiled his plans to streamline the Free Application for Federal Student Aid last month, he called on Congress to strike from the form several questions about family income and assets. Today the U.S. House of Representatives took the first step toward that goal, in a sweeping student-aid bill introduced by Rep. George Miller of California, chairman of the education committee. Among many other changes, the legislation would remove questions about aid applicants’ assets from the form, known as the Fafsa. To ensure that removing the questions would not result in the redistribution of aid to high-income families, the bill introduced today would bar students with individual or family assets over $150,000 from receiving need-based grants.

Commentary

If this isn’t a clear sign that Congress has no idea what it’s doing, nothing else is. First, the question on assets is removed from the FAFSA, and then legislation will ensure that students with assets over $150,000 will not get need-based aid.

Doesn’t that seem wildly contradictory?

The bill is named the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009. As with all things Congress names, it will likely do the opposite and provide neither student aid nor fiscal responsibility.

Scholarship Update

Two awards today: the Scholarships4Moms $10,000 scholarship and the FCS $10,000 scholarship.