Students hoping to receive financial aid next year may be in for an easier experience when filling out the financial aid application. The U.S. Department of Education is working on making the Free Application for Federal Student Aid more accessible and easy to use for students struggling with the lengthy, complex FAFSA form.

The FAFSA is the form used for all federal financial aid programs, as well as for many state, regional and private aid programs. The streamlining of the application is part of the Obama Administration’s plan to increase post-secondary enrollment, particularly among low- and middle-income students.

According to a June press release by the U.S. Department of Education, “Starting in January 2010, students applying for financial aid for the spring semester will be able to seamlessly retrieve their relevant tax information from the IRS for easy completion of the online FAFSA.”

Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education Arne Duncan also plans to make the application shorter by removing redundant questions. In the 2009-10 FAFSA, for example, students are first asked for their birthdate, then asked if their birthdate is before Jan. 1, 1986. These kinds of questions are not required for the needs analysis of students, and only serve as ground for errors, said Craig Yamamoto, Sacramento State director of financial aid.

If Duncan’s proposal to shorten the FAFSA is approved by Congress, 26 questions that have little to no impact on aid awards will be removed from the FAFSA.

The expected changes will only affect the online version of the FAFSA. The paper form, which currently consists of 109 questions totaling six pages, will remain unchanged.

“Linking the IRS information directly into the FAFSA will be great because then the information would have already been verified by the IRS and all the tax information we know is coming from a very accurate source,” said Kylee Keroher, Sacramento State financial aid assistant director. “Part of the problem for most students and parents is that they get confused on which line we’re looking at, which return we’re looking at, what we are asking.”

Yamamoto said there has been a 30 percent spike in the number of FAFSAs submitted this year compared to prior years. Last year, 17,258 Sac State students received some form of financial aid.

With this many student financial aid files to process, the work of the financial aid office on campus can pile up quickly.

“We are required to verify certain data elements on the FAFSA and most of that is the tax information. If a student is selected for verification, we have to collect tax forms, then we have to make sure that the figures on the tax forms are correct on the FAFSA and if they’re not, then we have to go through a correction process,” Yamamoto said. “That will delay a student’s ability to get their financial aid award and financial aid disbursements.”

Yamamoto hopes that the FAFSA simplification will contribute to faster disbursement of awards for students since there will be less verification for the office to do.

Students also agree that changes to the FAFSA are necessary.

“It’s a good idea. (Students) will be encouraged more to fill out the FAFSA and it won’t be such an overwhelming experience for them,” said Christina Tamai, senior kinesiology major.

Even students like Britney Magyarosi, senior liberal studies major, who think the FAFSA is more straightforward than people make it seem, agrees that simplifying the application will be helpful.

“I think it’s kind of pointless to ask the same questions over and over again. If it’s simpler, more people won’t be so afraid to attempt it. It must seem scary if they have to do like a workshop on how to do it,” Magyarosi said.

The FAFSA workshops provided by the Sac State financial aid office are not meant to make the financial aid process scary. Instead, they are an effort to increase student awareness of available financial aid and to provide assistance for students struggling with the application process.

“We put on workshops for students where we actually do the FAFSA with them here on campus,” Keroher said. “We’ll walk them through the whole thing in about half an hour and that usually eliminates a lot of the headaches for students because we’re there to help them answer everything.”

Inna Gritsak can be reached at [email protected].