Transcripts For CSPAN2 Student Aid Application 20171128

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the cynic in me to help education labor and pensions will please come at order. Im usually on time, especially for an education hearing and excuse me for being late. This is the first in his his appearance as we finished our consideration of proposals to reauthorize the Higher Education act. Today we look at ways to simplify the free application for student aid, or fafsa, to make it easier for students to apply for federal Financial Aid. Senator murray and i will each have an Opening Statement and then well introduce the witnesses, and after your testimony senators will have five minutes of questions. A lot going on today so senators may be coming and going because of the tax bill. Nearly four years ago, in a hearing before this committee, an unusual thing happened. For witnesses from diverse backgrounds agreed that almost all of the 108 questions on the free application for federal student aid, or fafsa, are unnecessary. The fafsa is a government for him 20 million still out every year in order to qualify for the 140 million in federal aid that helps nearly 29 students attend 6000 colleges and universities. Senator bennet and i spent a lot of time holding this up in the air to let people, we like people of all these questions, even though most people felt it out online. Theyre still the same number of questions. At the end of the ring i asked the witness if they could summarize their proposal to simplify the fafsa in four separate letters to us. They said they could do it together with one letter. Senator bennet and i then had the same reaction. If theres that much consensus on how to make it easier for nearly 20 million families to apply for federal aid, we asked, why dont we actually do it . That was four years ago. Senator bennet and i are about to turn one of eight questions into two. On a postcard that dr. Scottclayton who with you today recommended in her testimony four years ago. Lets take a moment to talk about why simplifying the fafsa is important. First, nearly 29 students fill out this one every year. Which means they receive a federal grant or loan as a freshman you will have to fill it out again to continue to receive your 84 sophomore year and beyond. What experience Financial Aid officers tell us it doesnt take long to complete, weve heard over and over again from parents, students and Higher Education officials how difficult it is the first time. Second, this complexity frustrates the goal of the pell grant which is not low income Students Attend College because it discourages them from applying for aid. I know intimacy where two years of post secondary education is now free, the complexity of te fafsa is the single biggest impediment to more students taking advantage of what we call tennessee promise. The former president of southwest tennessee committed the college in memphis told me he believes he loses 1500 students each semester because of the complexity of the form. Third, this complexity wastes time and money that could be better spent helping students choose the right college or major or develop Financial Literacy skills so they can understand the impacts of taking out student loans. After four years of discussion over how to stop by the fafsa, it is time to come to a result. Our first order of business after the first of the year will be to mark up a reauthorization in the Higher Education act. Mice and books read be to maket simpler and easier for students to apply for federal aid and to pay their loans back. And to cut through the jungle of red tape that federal law and regulations imposes on college administers can spend the time and money instead for the benefit of student with a number of bipartisan proposals before the committee that seek to do those things. After arguing for years ago, senator bennet and i along with senators murr, isakson, senator king and barker introduced our legislation to cut the 108 fafsa questions down to two questions. We have listened to students, Financial Aid officers and College President s. Weve done this in a bipartisan way for four years. We will hear some of those good ideas today, for example, senator murray has a bill to simplify the fafsa process for homeless students and students without parents. We worked with the Obama Administration to allow students to fill out the fafsa with their Tax Information from two years before they enroll in college instead of one so they can file in the fall rather than having to wait until the spring. The result of this is senator bennet and by completing work on a bill that would reduce the fafsa from 108 questions to as few as 15, and no more than 25 questions, depending on how you answer questions about your family. We will do this principally by taking the Tax Information the americans, that american scale to the federal government and incorporating that Tax Information into the fafsa. Over and over again across tennessee ive been asked if ive already given my Tax Information to the federal government, why do i have to give it again for the fafsa . My answer is that you shouldnt have to. Once is enough. Our proposal will tell students the amount of their pell grant, money they dont have to pay back, before the applied to college instead of after theyve already been accepted to schools. I have a long perspective on this. This, as Education Sector oversaw the implementation of the first fafsa in january 1993 short before i left office. While the fafsa is a complex form today, it was actually created then to reduce the burden on students by combining federalstate and institutional based Financial Aid applications into one single application. The first fafsa had four pages of questions, and 12 pages of directions. Todays fafsa is ten pages with directions included on the form plus an additional 66 pages of instructions. Now 25 years later i sit is chairman of the Senate Education committee trying to update the Higher Education act, and once again simplify how students apply for federal Financial Aid. Over the next couple of months i want our committee to listen to the experts to discuss different proposals and write and pass a final bill. 255 years after the first fafsa and four years after the first hearing, it is time to bring this discussion to a result. We should be able to say to the nearly 20 million families develop the fafsa instead of entering 108 questions, you will have to answer about 1525. Once is enough to give your basic information about family, size and income to the federal government. Instead of waiting until youre been admitted to college we will tell you about your pell grant while you are still shopping around for schools. Senator murray. Thank you very mu ch, mr. Chairman. And i want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing from all of you about your expenses with the preapplication for the fafsa form and your thoughts on how we can best improve access to federal Financial Aid. However, navigating fafsa is just one of the many challenges todays students are facing and for them these issues dont come up one at a time. They are all wrapped together to College Students are taking on mountains of debt and are concerned about finding a job after school, whether the school or program is safe, whether its preparing them for the workforce and disrespected by employers and a lot more. So in order to help our students we have to make sure were trying to solve the big problem along with a smaller ones impacting students and families but we need to tackle the issues that impact College Students the most, and i believe on this committee that is done so much good Work Together that we can do that. Thats what its a critical we take a comprehensive approach to update our nations Higher Education act. Chairman alexander and i have heard concerns expressed that pursuing a comprehensive approach to reauthorize this law would be too difficult. Well, in these partisan times will notably get done and thats a weird by the way before we did no child left behind. People said it was too toxic to judge and it would never be over the past a true reauthorization. They said we should just focus on low hanging fruit and leave the rest for another time, another congress. Thankfully chairman alexander and i push those naysayers aside. We got to work and we got it done. So im hopeful and confident we can Work Together on a comprehensive approach to reauthorizing the Higher Education act the same way. There is simply too many important issues facing students and working families when it comes to accessing affordable, highquality education. We got to take a holistic approach to Higher Education reform to build the systems that help them of students. We can Work Together to address issues like fafsa simplification, at an important that is, but we must at the same time work to tackle the biggest problem is critical law aims to address. Because i believe in order to truly solve the challenges students face, we have to address for major issues. The rising cost of college, schools and programs that are not held accountable for Student Success, terriers for working families, students of color and firstgeneration students to attend college, and ongoing threats to learning in a safe environment. I want to go into each of those because theyre all important. First, we got to address the skyrocketing cost of college and find ways for more students to be able to graduate without debt. And we must consider the full cost of College Beyond just tuition, food, transportation, housing, textbooks, childcare. Secondly, we need to make sure colleges and workforce Training Programs are producing what outcomes for students and preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow and are being held accountable when that isnt the case. And that has to include providing students with the information they need to make smart choices about their future before they enroll in classes with an expensive price tag. Third, we need to improve historically underrepresented students ability to access and succeed in the Higher Education. And finally we need to ensure every student has the ability to learn and a safe environment, free from discrimination and violence. And you must include doing more to combat the National Epidemic of Campus Sexual Assault and beginning to address dangers hazing practices. Now of course simplifying the fafsa should be part of our comprehensive reauthorization. Eifert from people across my state how complicated and difficult filling out the application can be, and i know everyone has heard the same thing. Simplify fafsa would help ease the burden of college cost for students who may be leaving money on the table. And by addressing concerns of students from nontraditional backgrounds including homeless and foster student we can open the doors of opportunity to students who otherwise might not get the Financial Aid they need. And all the hurdles of Financial Aid, hickory requirements, verification, refining the form feature can create real barriers for students who deserve our help. Its clear simplifying fafsa would help students. It alone cannot solve the challenges of families across the country faced in addressing and affording Higher Education. So this is a good first step and i hope we can continue this conversation with a comprehensive solution in mind and at hearings on a variety of issues impacting students and their families. This committee has a record of Bipartisan Solutions to big, complex problems and im confident we can find a bipartisan path forward to tackle all these issues head on. Our students are counting on it. Before a close, chairman alexander, i want to make one final point. Its important i need to make you people get too deep into Higher Education issues. One of the largest hurdles to passing any new bipartisan education law is how secretary devos and the department of education are today currently picking and choosing when to follow laws written by this committee and passed by the congress. Right now secretary devos and her department are blatantly violating the current k12 law that we just updated two years ago. They wont follow the very statuary language this committee settled on review and i worked together on every Student Succeeds act. We reached an agreement to give states flexibility while including some of the requirements for stays in the statute. The requirements are in black and white. They are in the law and have nothing to do with regulation. And i am deeply troubled that violations of the law are being ignored by the department of education. I want to give you an example the law requires in statute that states identify three distinct categories of school term improvement. Bottom 5 schools, all schools where one subgroup is consistently underperforming, and schools with any subgroup is performing at poorly at the bottom 5 . Plans are now being approved that pilot is and that more examples i would be happy to talk through but chairman alexander, if the department is to the ignoring the agreement that we made in law and choosing to implement whatever it feels like, which i believe that art and approval estate plan so far, then this community to hear from the secretary directly about how she intends to follow the laws that Congress Agrees to, especially as we begin our to reauthorize it im confident we can address this issue and hope we can hear from the the depars and i hope we can begin addressing the critically important issues in Higher Education. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator murray. For both your comments on both subjects, of course. I look forward to talking to you about the matter going on [inaudible] prohibit a secretary from doing certain things. As far as Higher Education, i agree with what you said. Im eager to sit down and visit with you and get started on reauthorizing the Higher Education act. Those no reason why we cant do that together we figured out how this committee to tackle big issues and, at lots of points of views and come up with the of people appreciate it when we do so the sooner we get going on that, the better. And my hope would be that we could take a bipartisan work that weve done over the last three or four years really and turn it into our result in the First Quarter of next year and i look forward to working with you on that. Im pleased to welcome our witnesses to todays hearing, focus on simplifying the fafsa. I like to ask introduce the first witness, dr. Mccallin. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i would like to thank you and Ranking Member murray for focusing our attention on this important issue. Mr. Chairman, on what to thank you for your partnership over these four years on fafsa. I know our first witness agrees with what were trying to do. This morning its my pleasure to introduce dr. Nancy mccallin from my home state of colorado. For the last 13 years dr. Mccallin has served as president of the Colorado Community college system, the largest system in the state to educate one out of every three of our undergraduate students. During her tenure at colorados comedic host system is not Ambitious Initiative to increase Student Success and make college more affordable to cut her leadership the system revamp its program and streamline the curriculum cisterns can graduate faster and with less debt. She increased transfer agreements with fouryear colleges similar students can pursue fouryear degrees and she expanded concurrent enrollment for High School Students by 200 saving our students and families roughly 90 90 million in tuin cost. Her leadership in Higher Education is just the latest chapter in her career of public service. Recent she served in the administration of governor bill owens and was chief economist for the colorado legislature. Dr. Mccallin announced her retirement by thanking her for her service to colorado for making the time to join us this morning. We look forward to her testimony. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, senator, bennet. I now recognize senator kaine to introduce ms. Williams. I get a look at all to the chair and ranking. True and honored today to introduce one of our witnesses, elaine williams, who is a richmond are just like me but it should because of a really inspirational work as a community advocate. Ms. Williams is a recent graduate of the virginia college, University School of social work at ive got both grads and School Social worker rats on my staff. Its a Wonderful Program and she currently works as a diversion specialist with the ywca, helping people avoid homelessness. She is passionate about that because she wasnt unaccompanied homeless child coming into college, and grappling with fafsa. Especially not just the form but the verification requirements of fafsa so i i hope well get ino not just the form but some of the verification issues. Now in addition to work at the ywca she is cofounder change the world rpa which is a Nonprofit Organization to serve you expensing homelessness in richmond and which she was in college she started and what wok with a group called advocates for richmond youth, a passion for homeless kids is a big driver for her. So thank you for your dedication and for your Inspirational Service ever look forward to hearing from you today about how we can better serve the people of a sum of the same challenges you faced. Thank you, senator kaine. Our third witness is dr. Judith scottclayton. She is associate professor of economics in education teachers college, university. Shields position of National Economic research, commit Ecology Research center and the Brookings Institution pictures testified before the senate twice earlier, including in the hearing for years ago that led to the fast act could she made her first pass a simple vacation proposal in 2007. She earned her phd from harvard. Our next witness is mr. Justin draeger, president of the National Association of student Financial Aid administrators. His organization represents Financial Aid administrators that serve 90 of american College Students. Prior to becoming president of his organization, mr. Draeger worked as a Financial Aid director regulatory and policy analyst and spokesperson. Our final witness, dr. Kim rueben, senior fellow at the urbanbrookings Tax Policy Center at the urban institute. Our research focuses on education finance, fiscal institutions, public secretary of labor markets, state and local tax policy and budget. She conducted a Detailed Analysis of various fafsa simplification proposals offered today. She earned her phd from mit. I i look forward to everyones testimony. Thank you for being here. As reminder if you will summarize your testimony in five minutes, that will leave more time for senators to ask questions. And i would simply mention that this is what we call a bipartisan hearing, which means senator murray and ive agreed on the subject and we have agreed on the witness. So it ought to be a good discussion. Why dont we begin with dr. Mccallin and google go right down the line . Welcome, dr. Mccallin. Thank you. Thank you, chairman alexander, Ranking Member murray, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and senator bennet are senator bennet noted the colorado comedic host this is a the largest in the state of colorado serving approximately 138,000 students at 13 13 colls and 39 locations. And despite the fact we intentionally keep our tuition low, our students to struggle to pay for college. Approximately 40 of our students receive some form of federal or state Financial Aid that requires filling out the fafsa form. And when you factor out are not High School Students, its even higher, about half of our students qualify for federal Financial Aid or state Financial Aid through the form. Altogether our students receive 211 million of federal Financial Aid. 90 million of which is the pell grant, and 38. 3 million in state aid to pursue their post secondary education. And increasingly we know that the ticket to the middle class, the ticket to succeeding in this Economy Today is to have a post secondary degree. In fact, according to georgetown university, 74 of our post, of our new jobs that are being created in the state of colorado by 2020 require some form of Postsecondary Education. And we know that completing the fafsa form is difficult, complex and it is daunting for many of our students, particularly for firstgeneration students that comprise 54 of our overall student population. Community colleges have persistently had the lowest fafsa Completion Rate at any sector of Higher Education. Despite the fact that we know we have the largest number and the larger share of low income students. And by not completing these fafsa forms will be happening is student foregoing their opportunity for Higher Education, and the opportunity to succeed in this increasingly complex and competitive economy. When asked why he did not complete the form they had numerous reasons. Some said it was too much work. Many said they didnt have information with which to apply. They thought they were ineligible. They did not want to go into debt despite the fact the fafsa form determines what your pal eligibility is and that does not require you to go into debt. And without applying many students have missed the opportunity to get those grants to further their education. As was mentioned previously, its a lengthy application with 66 pages of instructions, is the first barrier to completing the fafsa form. The next barrier and a significant challenge for us is the verification process. Our Financial Aid administrators estimate that one quarter of the time is spent on the verification process. In our system, 94,169 students submitted the fafsa form last year. But only 53,582 actually completed the form, and of those, 94,000 students, approximate 37,000 were selected for verification which is somewhat higher than the national average. At of the students who were selected for verification, only 16,728 completed the process. The complexity and length of the form and the confusion over what number to put in what box on the form altogether but has limited and precluded access to Higher Education. And this simple act of simplifying the form really could go a long way towards improving access and helping students get their degrees as well as compete in the economy. And we know that if were able to free up some of our Financial Aid, administrators time and that have been have to do extensive verification support, we could increase intensity advising strategies that are proven to increase retention rates. Twice seven Percentage Points and Completion Rates anywhere from six to 11 percentage rate. We could do more mentoring that we do today. We can help Financial Literacy more so than we do today. We could provide more increase support for scholarship applications and have precollegiate outreach. In fact, for colorado one of the biggest concerns we had is that of 109th graders today only 43 are going on to college. 100ninth graders. It is a dismal here so as a result the precollegiate outreach could definitely help students pursue their goals. So thank you for your attention to helping to improve Higher Education for our students, and im open to any questions you may have. Thank thank you, dr. Mccalli. Good morning to club i woule to thank chairman alexander, Ranking Member murray, and the members of h. E. L. P. Committee for the opportunity to speak about my experiences. The problem of Youth Homelessness is bigger than many people realize. A new National Report at the university of chicago and at least 700,000 youth between the ages of 1317, 17, 3. 5 million g adults between the ages of 1825 experience homelessness in a year. This represents one in 30 youth between the ages of 1317, and one in ten young adults between ages of 1825. I was one of them. My experience of homelessness began during middle school pigment mother was not able to take care of me due to struggles with addiction and Mental Health problems. Although she was doing much better now, my mother lost custody of me at one point. I moved in with relatives without a stable place to stay, six different times. Two months before High School Graduation i was put out and had to stay with one of my friends. In spite of all the struggles i knew i had to continue, to pursue my dreams of college. I grew up in poverty and didnt see Anyone Around me going to college. I wanted Something Different for myself and future. But as i i tried to fill out te fafsa, the council kept asking for my mothers financial information. I finally broke down and told her that my mother was not in the picture. The counselor contacted the high School Social worker should i could go to college. She brought me the unaccompanied Homeless Youth information that allowed me to develop the fafsa. Soon after, i was accepted into virginia university. Unfortunately i needed to live on campus as Virginia Union in order to be able to go to school which added to the cost. I had to work which prevented me from losing the hours needed that was required for one of the scholarships so i lost that scholarship. I had to go to find your aid office for citizens susan b str work. I work fulltime at times ready to try again. This time of virginia, with university. Although i had many great expenses at vcu, the fafsa process proved an obstacle to the required me to submit to letters to verify my unaccompanied youth status as well as other kinds of documentation. It took four months for everything to close on lost out on grants awarded on a firstcome firstserved basis. I had to take out more loans. The following care my fafsa experience was even worse pick the Financial Aid office told me that because i was no longer in high school he would not accept a letter from my School Social worker. They demanded a certain letter, certain kinds of homeless shelters but there are no homeless shelters for youth enrichment. And i dont shelters told me go stay with family members which was impossible. Every single year it was daunting to have come to answer the question 53 and 54. It was retraumatizing tactics when my sister over and over again to strangers to. Felt like he didnt believe me. So fafsa determination caused also contributed to my student debt because i lost out on a lot of grant due to the delays caused by documentation requirements. When the fafsa was my number one hurdle in completing college. I had other challenges especially housing and Mental Health services. In spite of all that i graduated on may 2017 with my bachelors in social work. I now work as a shelter divergent specials at the why did you see a of richmond. I am a role model to my for young siblings, and my peers in the community. Through the nonprofit ive cooked that im able to serve as a mentor and work with other students are experiencing homelessness. My three top recommendations for congress to make the fafsa simpler for homeless and foster youth are eliminates requirement for unaccompanied Homeless Youth to have status determine each year. This requirement creates more paperwork burden for students and asked to our trauma. Second, reduce the documentation requirements for determining that a youth is homeless and in company to become you authorized source the Financial Aid office should accept it. Third, require colleges and universities to designate a staff person single point of contact to help Homeless Youth and foster youth just like my school in k12. K12. We need a person connexus to resources both on offcampus and help us navigate Financial Aid and other support. In closing i i like to thank yu for this opportunity and hope my testimony will help inform decisions about the fafsa for many youth like me. Thank you, ms. Williams for thats testimony and impressive effort that you have make it we thank you for coming. Dr. Scottclayton, welcome back. Thank you, chairman alexander, Ranking Member murray, and members of the committee. It is an honor to be again to testify today especially with this esteemed panel of witnesses. My role i think is to briefly share a few key research finding writing to this topic which have heaven for my own policy recommendations. First, ask us a college that is than ever. Those with a College Education not only have more stable employment and earnings, are also more likely to vote and they pay enough in additional taxes to more than repay the public investments are we making them by naturally. Please note when talking about college im not just talking about their traditional for your bachelor degree but also about the full range of post secondary education of federal student aid supports including Associates Degrees and certificates and high return fields. Second, decades of Rigorous Research across a range of context shows Financial Aid works not only does aid increased involvement and completion but new evidence shows it can also students graduate faster and can lead to higher earnings and high rates of Home Ownership after college as well. And yet despite rising returns to college and is by substantial amount of federal Financial Aid, they happen College Attainment between high and low income family is actually bigger now than it was a generation ago. Federal student aid needs to do more to narrow this gap. This brings me to my third key fighting, the details of Program Design really matter. Unfortunately the federal student aid programs hide their substantial benefits under a thicket of bureaucracy as we just heard. This is embodied in the free application for federal student aid, or the fafsa. For many families without the fafsa is more complicated than doing the annual income taxes. When i coded up the fafsa form and research it took hundreds of lines of code to describe. By this time everyone knows fafsa is annoying but we wouldnt be today if it were just about an annoyance. Research shows and which assert that this form itself is become a significant barrier to College Access. Its complexity and lack of transparency make it very hard for students to figure out what they are eligible for while and that of the College Decision and it generates unnecessary hurdles just as stewards are juggling many of the new responsibilities and navigating their path to college. We dont have to speculate about whether the fafsa should a barrier. Several highquality randomized experiment has shown when students or Prospective Students receive assistance filling out and submitting the form, enrollment and retention rates increase. One study found providing application assistance increased College Enrollment rates by eight Percentage Points. We could do even better by civil fine the process at its source. My fourth key findings from research is that all this complexity is not even necessary to accurately predict what students will qualify for. Analyst including myself have conducted simulations in which real fafsa applications are run through the need calculation but with various financial elements disregarded. The simulations show that both tell eligibility in the expected family contribution, or the efc, can be replicated with high degree of accuracy using only a handful of key items. Asset information is perhaps the biggest surprise, although this question are among the most complicated for individuals to report, for the vast majority of applicants they dont play any role at all in the pell calculation even in the broader calculation of efc. So the benefits of complexity are small while the costs are very large. So my fifth and final conclusion is that simplification is imminently feasible. We can do this. Progress has been made in recent years in a a limited in questis on the form, automatically Important Information from the irs and enabling students to apply earlier. But overall the process remains a major source of house of representatives in conclusion confusion. Hassle and confusion or groups are offered plans for certification including myself. Theres more than one half meaningful and effective supplication as long as it achieves cheeky goals. First minimize application hassle and second maximizing transparency. This leads me to the following general recommendation. First we should base pell awards on a limited number of Data Elements available from the irs so that no separate financial application is necessary. Second, provide states and institutions with an efc or simulate efc that they can use to continue to distribute their own aid. Third, consider fixing federal aid eligibility for several years allowing students to plan for a multiyear course of study with that needing to reapply multiple times. Fourth, summarize pell eligible to if i them income on a postcard that schools, counselors and Community Organizations can post and distribute even if some wine produced a record. And finally use irs information to proactively communicate Prospective Students and families about the likely tell eligibility. My written testimony has Additional Details and i look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Scottclayton. Mr. Draeger, say welcome. Thank you. In 2014 send alexander you came and spoke to several thousand Financial Aid administrators in national and proposed a two question fafsa, and thats my friends in tennessee have told me that created quite a dustup amongst our membership. Not because they dont want to make the application simpler but when you look at the amount of grant aid delivered every year in this country, 40 billion of that comes from the federal government which is not an insignificant amount of money. Did if the 8 billion i become se institutions and another 25 billion come some state and outside scholarship providers. The context i want to paint is there are other entities that are awarding significant amount of grant aid that have interest in making sure were doing two things when we have students complete the fafsa. One, which i think we are pretty much all an alignment on is making it as easy as possible. And that includes making the verification process as easy as possible. The second piece is making sure that we have accurate data to assess the financial strength of every family. At its core, grants, needbased grants come down to a few basic principle. The first principle is this, the primary responsibility to pay for college is that of the student and family, and that students and families they cant afford to pay for college should. Should. The second principle is that for students and families do not have the means to pay for college, we should have a web of grant providers that includes the federal government, state and institutions of scholarship providers that fill in the knee. Number three, that because grant dollars a limited we ask students to complete some sort of application so we can try to assess their needs. The unifying concept of the fafsa is that all these different grant providers could try and rely on one form so we dont have fragments of multiple forms throughout the process. So the tradeoff we be talking about for years is one, how many questions to ask, and as few ss possible to make this easy. And number two, actually do we want to determine the applicants financial strength . I think that the good news is a lot has changed in the last four years since this conversation has started, and after convening a group of practicing aid directors from all types of schools and with what weve come technologically and with the timing of the fafsa now, i think we can for breakout of this binary tradeoff weve been grappling with for many years. Our proposal and it aligns well with several other independently greater proposals relies on existing databases of information that would repopulate or auto fill for applicants, providing verified information so that students and families would no longer have to go through an arduous verification process with the school. Our first pathway would be for low income students who come from backgrounds with a minute make enough money to even have to file tax returns these families probably already qualify for specific means tested benefits like snap or ssi, and in those instances this is a matter of linking databases that already exist so that we can auto qualified lowincome students for full health eligibility. Our second pathway is for those with uncomplicated tax forms pics of these are your 1040 without schedules, 1040 ez or 1040 a. If all the information we need to determine their health eligibility, and in most instances, school and state eligibility. So if we could prepopulate or import them from the tax return we could dramatically reduce the number of questions they provide commented on it significant assets as demonstrated by their tax return. The third pathway is for those who have complicated tax returns and thereby collocated financial situations. We dont think its necessarily an issue to have slightly more complicated form for families at every complicated financials that would be demonstrated by schedules that indicate business income, the Real Estate Investments or other types of investments that a lot of pell eligible students do not have it in those instances still we can get the majority of information directly from the tax return. So we could make this easier for all if we start moving towards using verified data upfront. One final point i would make about simplicity and complexity. Creating an application process that i just described would introduce some complexity, but not for the applicant. Thats the part that we are focused on. The complexity in programming and indexing tax returns and transferring data and linking up databases, thats all backend complexity. And i dont know that we ought to sq complexity on the backend if at the think time it maintains integrity and accuracy on the front end, and ultimately makes it easier for applicants. And i provided a handout in your materials that show the pathways that are just described. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Draeger. Dr. Rueben, welcome. Thank you, thank you, chairmn alexander, Ranking Member murray and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to discuss simplifying the fafsa, the use and put expected armentano should not be related to the urban institute. The fafsa enable millions of students to apply for Financial Aid, as my colleagues have shown. But it also presents significant barriers for some students, most notably low income or firstgeneration students. It has grown more and more complex as officials try to ensure they provide aid to those who need it but only those who need it. Policymakers have made some progress recently in some find the fafsa adding skip logic to illuminate limit irrelevant questions using the irs data retrieval tools and facing rewards on prior year income. But theyre still work to be done. The application process is still cumbersome and the comp lex formula for the expected family contribution makes it difficult for students to know that aid eligibility before the apply for college. Further simplification is a a lowcost way to increasing the effectiveness of the federal commitment to provide Educational Opportunities and it is especially important for lowincome students who are least likely to attend college and who could benefit the most from an approved system. My written testimony includes descriptions and cost estimates of fafsa supplication proposals including those of my colleagues sitting to my right. Made over the last few years. This is based on earlier work where we made apples to ask comparisons of the cost and distribution of benefits of different options. Some proposals like the fast act would ask families a few questions to calculate pell grant awards like others would maintain the single process for decorating both awards and other aid but would simply by the existing system to the use of Technology Light on tax return information. The details and implementation are important but all that i will highlight the possible posy of an ecosystem to ugly it is time to decouple the process according to how grants from the rest of the Financial Aid award system. It would still be important to maintain a universal federal application for other types of aid. So five particularly bouncing steps would be the following. First, determine how a great eligibility using just the key pieces of information such as family income, family size and family relationship. Number two, make pell Grant Eligibility and application available to an app or a tool that can access using a smartphone or tablet, not just a computer. I think were beyond the postcard facebook people are more comfortable to use the phone to view these out. For other aid maintain universal application from the relies on branching system which eliminate the need for applicants to you questions that might ask for information that they just dont understand. Include far fewer questions in the application process that allows data to be downloaded directly from tax returns. Finally this probably means we have to change the irs data retrieval system to make simplification possibly including and indicator for the presence of business or capital income that would trigger additional questions about a students wealth. A a simplified pell formula can make a more predictable and effective for low income students. Even for those who are not yet attending college. Many of the objections losing nuance can be met by including information about Family Structure and changing aid formulas. We can differentiate between a twoperson phone with two adult or a parent and child and then change the size of reward according. I would go from it to factor to a three factor system. I would suggest deciding pell grants after students answer three simple questions, why does your family and, come how many people are in your family, are you are one of your family members a dependent child . I suggest maintaining a federal system for accessing other aid so we dont return to a system where students need to fill out a new uniforms at each state level to access other aid during the application process. Im excited to see the committee continue this important work and i hope will lead to more students including and especially firstgeneration and lowincome students attending college. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and i i look forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you very much, very interesting testimony. We will now go to fiveminute rounds of questions. Im going to step down the hall and introduce a witness, a president ial nominee at another hearing what i should be back in just a few minutes. Senator murray has agreed to chair the committee during that time. Senator murkowski has the first questions. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I agree, right interesting panel. Panel. I think its important to recognize that theres nobody on the panel this morning that thinks that the system that we have in place for the application and the requirement that we have in place is good and that it needs to be maintained. I think there is a recognition that we must do more to make sure that we do not put in place barriers pick and i appreciate the recognition that theres a difference between a form that is annoying and just kind of a pain to fill out, and something that is truly a barrier. And i hear are far, far too often that it is a barrier, that you young people that look at it and say i cant even go there. They bring their parents into the picture, and they, too, give up. And so i do think that it is important that we look to ways that we cannot only simplify but to your point, dr. Rueben, lets come into todays world. The fact will talk about postcards, if i would ask my son to me a postcard, i dont know where you would find a stamp. And the reality that we are doing so much on our smartphones, this ought not be one of those when we say well, we just cant do it. So i think as we are looking to making it simpler, with also use the tools again people are using which is your device, your phone. I wanted to ask just a little bit because theres been good discussion about the verification steps that need to go into place, and i think we can all agree that we need to work to address that more readily. But, dr. Mccallin, you had mentioned the efforts that we could make to work with young people earlier on so that they dont get discouraged, even before they get to a more truncated process, which hopefully we will put in place. And you mention precollegiate outreach. When we talked about healthcare and enrollment in healthcare plans, when the aca was advanced there was a rule that was designated for navigators. We know that within the Healthcare System you can have a navigator that can help you move through the system. Do we need, i i understand thae have counselors in our schools, although in my view, not enough. Do we need navigators, or do we make this simple enough that we dont need to do that, we shouldnt need a navigator . Senator murkowski, navigats are wonderful idea. In fact, the increased retention rates within college as well as the Completion Rates came from a navigator program. I hadnt quite thought of doing it in high school but certainly we know when we have focus groups in high school that that is one of the big issues, that they need somebody to help them fill out the form. And if you will hold their hand and advocates and into college another program we found to be very successful in getting students into college who otherwise would not have done so is concurrent enrollment. Socalled dual enrollment, Offering College credits to High School Student with an increase in College Going rates of 23 Percentage Points even after adjusting and assuring that show the same academic preparation, the same income levels and the light of those tunes with far higher College Going rates of students who take a concurrent course versus those of not so the combination of navigators, what we call focus centers in the Denver Public schools, for instance, where you have to go in and use their service to apply for fafsa as well as then to apply for other scholarships, then the concurrent enrollment as all proven to be good success stories. Let me ask you, ms. Williams, and i just want to thank you not only for your testimony here today which i think its very helpful, very instructive, but thank you for your determinist, your efforts to just stick with a process that was not easy, that probably made it easier for you to quit at every turn, and you did that. He graduated so congratulations you. I think you an extraordinary role model for so many. But would it have been helpful for you prior to even considering college to have something at the High School Level that would have allowed you to more readily move towards it . You sound to me to be the type of young woman that is going to get around all the odds, you also know others that were in a summer situation. How can we make it easier . Thank you for that question. So for me it was a little different because i was part of a program in high school so i was a part of the upward Bound Program that would expose me to Higher Education. Which really gave me that drives to pursue Higher Education. However, i think the point of contact should be put in place on the College Level going into your first year. Because for me it was, i had a program that works around how the High School Students to fill out your fafsa and get all the documentation done. So i had that in high school but when it came to college i didnt have those resources. There wasnt the point of contact on the college and come to d. C. As a transfer student i really did how to navigate that. Because of student going from a private school to a public institution. So for me it would be more of a point of contact on the university to work with youth, unstable housing and homelessness. Very good. Appreciated that. Thank you. They give her much. We will go to senator bennet first. Thank you. I want to thank senator murray for using to me because i to run off. The last conversation with my friend from alaska put her finger on something so important. When i was superintendent of Public Schools with a local couple, he was a graduate of lincoln high school. They created something called the Denver Scholarship Foundation. What we said was no kiddie graduate from high school in denver would be barred from going to college because of finance. We would find a way. And it order to be eligible for the Denver Scholarship Foundation they had to apply to two other scholarships. In order to get they had to fill out the fafsa forebear pretty quickly figured out that was a huge banquet and we had to hire people as dr. Mccallin said to staff what we call the future centers or high schools to take people to these forms. People who are listening to this at home, this is not the form that is beyond this skill of our kids to do because they are poor or because they are homeless. This form is ridiculous. As we heard today in this testimony we need to stand by the sport and i wanted to ask doctor rubin, there has been discussion today and earlier about the concept of the tradeoff. The idea that by simplifying the form we risk losing data granularity and giving aid to students who dont need it. The risk lies in the other direction. Our current process is needlessly complicated, often intimidates talented and capable students, letting bureaucratic red tape Pain Education is its own kind of tradeoff and thats one weve accepted for too long in my view. I wonder if you could talk about what the effects of simplification are financially under the various proposals and will most students see a drastic change in the award using the current formula and i have questions about untaxed income, typically alter a students award . Anybody, doctor drager if you could answer . Weekly i want to note on the postcard thing, truly conceptual but lets make it on a smart phone. The idea is to get the amount of information down so you can explain it simply to people. We have even more unity than when you left. With respect to simplification and how it will affect Financial Aid, one of the most surprising things when i started doing this research in 2006, 2007 was how little some of these questions matter and especially assets, which are so complicated for families to answer. Thats not something on the tax form, not something the most family have a single number. You have to do work understand what comes and what doesnt count and when it comes down to it most of that information doesnt even get used for anything because the form does exclude retirement savings, and of course on top of that it excludes another chunk which is higher than the level that we have. So i think some of the worry is understandable, but when you do these simulations, it turns out to not matter that much. It can get down to eight questions and for the vast majority, were talking 75, 85, 90 percent ofapplications replicate thepell grants and even cfp which is used for a wider range of for purposes within a narrow range , within 100 of the original amount. Cfps which are used for institutional aid, i completely understand the concern that the schools are using that for other purposes and it is true that some of the simplification does make a difference for efc calculations but about the range, well above the range most states are using to distribute their needbased aid so one thing, institutions that have their own aid to distribute need to have accuracy. A lot of them are already using a separate form so im not sure how many schools are in that window where they need the extra but they are not already using the extra form. I think it would be important to, i would separate the two. It might be a little bit of splitting the baby but i feel like if we had Something Like a pell grant award based on a couple questions that people understand, that would be step one and it might encourage them to put in the other information. But i do think we dont want to turn to a world where people are filling out different forms or different states for different colleges so having something easy at the beginning, but then figures them to go on and fill out the more important questions would be useful. That makes me out of time or overtime. No ahead, senator. I wanted to make one other observation to both you and the Ranking Member and what you talked about in the beginning. From doctor scott clintons testimony, she writes while the level of College Enrollments are higher across the board, the gaps in enrollment between high and low income families are greater for recent cohorts than for those born in the early 1960s. What that means is today , the gap between People Living in poverty and people are not with respect to whether our attaining any Postsecondary Education is greater than it was for people born in the 1960s. That is intolerable and its my hope that this committee and not just for the other work we do but actually begin to answer that question or help us answer that question about why we find ourselves in that position. Not a place where it should be in the world where weve discovered that having Postsecondary Education and as doctor mcallister said is so important to fulfill the employment needs of this economy so i didnt want to let this go without underscoring that important fact. Thank you for being here mister chairman, thank you for your leadership. Thank you senator bennett, senator murray. Thank you to all of our witnesses, and im going to start with you. Were so happy yourehere today and i just want to congratulate you on what youve accomplished. And i have to say im impressed you were able to make your way through a complicated financial a question. I want to introduce legislation to streamline the process for unaccompanied and Homeless Youth as well as foster youth and its caused access and success for homeless and foster youth act so thank you for your comments on that but we know thats not going to solve all the challenges that faced students and i want to ask what you were able to get through the fast god, what kind of financial pressures you experience that might inform us how wethink about both the entire press. Thank you senator mary for that question. For me, i think the financial pressure was having to work fulltime while being a fulltime student to take care of those basic needs like food, hygiene. Textbooks and things of that nature. Transportation back and forth to work. After i received my aid package it covered tuition and room and board but it didnt cover a meal plan or having Mental Health services or things of that nature and i would like to add without that point of contact, i didnt know how to get in contact with those others that i needed at the university. For me, thinking about housing and how much it costs on campus and then if you are making that Homeless Youth, you can stay at home even though from richmond, i couldnt stay at home and go to school so living on campus was a priority for me and having to take up, because i didnt qualify, it was having to think about how much im in debt with loans because thats how i got through college. It wasnt just your tuition, it was all the other things to get through it. And in your written testimony, you clearly demonstrate that Financial Issues were not the only financial obstacles youface. Only about the other kinds of support you wish you had had as a student that would have helped you. I guess i really believe the point of Contact Person is important on the university campus. For me, if i had someone who could help me navigate one Financial Aid housing and being able to access those things, i was fortunate that the nonprofit i cofounded supported me through my College Years i have that Wraparound Services and i had people who supported me when it came to being on campus and understanding how to navigate higher institutes, i needed more services that were there. For me it was more so trying to find my niche and how to advocate for myself and not having someone to help me and it felt like people were pushing back against me one site after. And you thought you were going to school. I had a group of College Students that i asked how many of you work and go to school and they all raised their hand. I said how many of you have one job and they look at me and i said to, three. Almost all of them they had to jobs so i think we have to recognize what the full scope of the cost of education , so thank you. Mccullen, you talked about the backend. Colleges, responsibility and that doesnt end once they get through the initial hoops of filling out that form. There are additional hurdles including verification and finding enough advisors to help students with Financial Aid. I think its important that our committee think about some of these issues in the context of simplification. We are focused very much on reducing the number of questions. Its an important issue on many of the proposals out there dont rely on double and even triple checking a students income information from their tax returns. What are the challenges for universities with verification for community College Students . We have to do significant amounts of Fact Checking for the student, so much so that oftentimes they will they forget it. Im done. But in terms of exactly what we end up doing, we have to contact the students for the verification process. We have to prepare the form. We have to make sure that it accurately is completing the form. We have to advise them on what is acceptable documentation through completion of the form or the verification, updating any differences they had input in the form versus what were finding in the verification. Forms and then once the correct data is returned to the processor, an additional review needs to be made so theres so much so that people are feeling as a big barrier and it takes a lot of time, 25 percent of our time. Not just their work but because your work is contacting. What kind of advising and Wraparound Services would be unneeded in the world as we simplify it. In particular, we are repopulating with the irs data, the data we already have in the federal government. That doesnt mean it didnt have to contact students . , it would be accurate data for those students who are filing or have families file a federal income tax form. So if we could reduce the amount of time on the verification, we could put it in so many needed Student Services like the ones you are requesting where you can have a navigator on College Campuses showing students how they can find other resources to help them afford that college. You agree that would be important. Absolutely. And overtime. I can go to a second round. We will come back, let me pick up questions if i may. On verification, if im a student at one of your campuses and you contact me about verifying, do i get my money or do i have to wait until its verified . Thats my understanding, is that correct . Or you be putting at risk having to return the money. So you have to go to are scrambling to go to college and all of a sudden instead of having their bills paid when they are enrolled they might have to wait until october, until all this is figured out. If verification, if we were to, the proposal that weve been talking about basically, once youve given your information about family size and income to the federal government once, that could be imported to the federal late application. With that greatly reduce the need for verification . Absolutely. What youre doing is comparing information you put on your federal aid forms and information you gave to the federal government earlier, right . Absolutely. That makes all the sense in the world. We do that here in the senate, that way we catch people. We require them to fill out the same information on three or four forms and a make a mistake and we accuse them of being a crook. Thats the difficulty with the nominations process. Did you want to Say Something else about verification . Im good, thanks. Mister drager, you mentioned that a simplified tax form would simplify the federal student aid process if say 90 percent of those who filled out the federal income taxes take any itemized deductions, would that create a simpler federal aid form . Yeah, our proposal is for a majority of pell grants recipients who dont have significant assets and dont have people attached to their tax form, we could get all the information off the front of the tax form if we took over the indexeditems from the front. Without drawing you into the tax debate this week , proposal would move from 70 percent to 90 percent the number of americans who wouldnt itemize their deductions and i suppose that would simplify the process. Doctor rubin, basically youre suggesting and i believe others are to that we separate out the pell grant and asked two or three questions and you identified what they were. That would be about 30 or 40 percent of all the 20 million forms that are filled out now, right . I think thats right. If we had people figure out the pell grant earlier, that might incentivize them through to go through the rest of the process. Those three questions were what . It started with what is in the fafsa. What is your family income, family size and i would also ask what your Family Structure is. So the first to you already reported to the federal government, correct . The third one would also require. Youre suggesting take three pieces of information that taxpayers already reported to the federal government, move that out and make a decision about whether you are eligible for a telegram and in what amount . The pell grant can be from 500 to something hundred dollars. I would use the formula which it doesnt have to be complicated but we could put in a formula. If we gave you the answer to those three questions you can figure it out. Yes, i would say based on how you compare to the federal poverty line. You agree with that . I agree with most of that. What you dont you agree with. The nice thing about using imported data from the tax return is we can get more of the full picture of someones financial circumstances in strength without requiring additional effort on their part so if i know for example somebody hasReal Estate Investments but their agi zero because of losses they written off. So you need that for a telegram . You dont necessarily need. Im talking about tell grants. Understand. For pell grant i would dispute it. For theschool that award institutionally, they would want. I did say what you didnt agree with and you were answering my question but you would agree that if its 30 or 40 percent,that we can identify those three questions or so. Yes. The importance is from the information we already have and make a decision about a, whether you are eligible for a grant and with backend computation say the amount of your pell grant is asked between 500 and 58. If the federal policy decision is to make this very easy for pell recipients, i think thats fine. Thank you. Senator franken. Thank you mister chairman, thank you for this hearing, thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony area and thank you senator bennett for working on this for so long and i want to thank, i want to take a moment to disagree with senator murray and i hope we have broader conversations about the college of affordability. As in every one of our state, its so important in minnesota, students graduate with a way more than 30,000. And across the nation, 44 million americans are paying off their student debt. So i was glad to hear the chairman agree heartily with the Ranking Members opening payment about trying to Work Together with earrings like this, bipartisan hearings and may you always have on Higher Education. Mister drager, your testimony, the tradeoff between simplicity and accuracy is a great way of talking about this and understanding it. Your testimony, you mentioned there were a lot more on technology after students commit. The fafsa to achieve simplicity and accuracy. Doctor mcallen, in your testimony you say if we reduce the time colleges spend on the verification process, we can redirect the resources to support more students and i think we all agree with that. I must say it miss williams you are amazingly impressive as a person and thank you for the work you are doing. I guess my question for doctor mcallen would be if we do what mister dragerproposes and do more work , would this help nontraditional students like for example foster kids . It would definitely help nontraditional students which is a vast majority of whom we serve in Community Colleges and as senator murray discussed, many of our students work 74 percent of our students have to work in order to be able to afford college. So simplification is important so that they can access all the aid that they have available. And in addition to that, yes, we do rely on the hell eligibility and certain eligibility efcs in order to distribute aid but we will adapt to whatever the new system is. That is something that we have control over. And if we are able to understand the income threshold or whether or not somebodys eligible for the pell, we adapt to that. Its not something set in stone so from my standpoint, its more simplistic the better in terms of helping access to aid. We need to simplify fafsa for students and their families, but we also need to help them better understand the Financial Aid award letters. That they receive from colleges after they submit. Right now, these Financial Aid letters are very often confusing. Ms. Williams, i want to ask about that. They often clearly dont delineate whats a grant versus what is alone. Senator grassley and i have introduced the understanding the true cost of college act, our bill is to make sure that students and their families get clear and uniform information so they can make apples to apples comparisons between what the different schools are offering them but when it comes to Financial Aid. How miss williams, how would a uniform financial award letter make it easier for families and students in particular low income and firstgeneration College Students that are understood better understand the true cost of college . X i would say that it will help one, i know for my experience, in particular i think about if i understood what those loans were and subsidized loans were, maybe i can reconsider trying to find other rants and scholarships to help pay for college. And like you stated, it does not break down what our grants, what are grants, what are loans, what are unsubsidized loans and what other loans and grants that you may qualify for so i believe if that is understood and the Financial Aid package, then you can, like you stated. You can make a decision on one university you go to based on how much theyre able to give you based on need. Or me, that wasnt a situation that i could see. It was more of a better understanding because ive been in the Higher Education institute for a year so i understood but a lot of students dont and they assume that when they see unsubsidized loans, they dont know it has interest and it will cost them more to pay back on the backend. I believe also working an endowment where students can understand would be more effective to pursue Higher Education and making it more affordable. Thank you mister chairman. Writing senator franken, ms. Warren. I know we are here to talk about ways the federal government can help more students accessFinancial Aid by simplifying fafsa and i agree, there is much we can do to simplify and im happy to work with you on how to do that. But i honestly do not understand how we configure and discuss fafsa amplification. As Congressional Republicans are as we see jamming through a giant tax giveaway to billionaires and corporations that would make college even more unaffordable. For millions of americans. So i appreciate the expertise that everyone of you shared and im going to submit written questions following this so ill get answers on the record. For fafsa simplification. But i want to follow up on what is happening in congress this week. Mister drager, let me ask you , one provision in the republican tax bill that passed the house would eliminate the tax reduction for student Loan Interest payment. The cost to students who borrow money to go to college would be 21 billion. With this tax change help or hurt students who borrow money to pay for college . The above elimination of the above the line deduction would make loans more expensive and thereby college more expensive. Doctor mcallen, do you agree this tax change hurt your students who have to borrow money to pay for college mark. Yes, it would make it less affordable to go to college and repay the loans. I would note that our students are loan of earth in general and 50 percent of our students to graduate with zero debt. For those who have debt, you would make it more costly. All right. Another provision in the tax bill to repeal Tax Exemption on waivers that cover graduate school tuition. The cost to students who get tuition waivers under this tax bill would be 5. 4 billion dollars. Doctor rubin, youre a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center at the urban institute. With this tax change help or hurt graduate students . Were going beyond what were talking about today and my views are my own and arent necessarily attributable to the Tax Policy Center. In the work weve done it like now still, the changes in making college and graduate school more expensive would hurt graduate students and in general between that and treating Employer Benefits or as tuition, its going to make it harder for people to attain the education that they need going forward. Mister drager, do you agree . Yes, as a general rule, tax benefits around College Access and affordability are doubly punitive. Thank you. According to an analysis requested by Ranking Member patty murray from congress nonpartisan joint committee on taxation, overall the republican tax bill that passed the house would cost College Students an estimated 71 billion dollars over the next 10 years. And the senate bill is projected to add more than 1 trillion to the National Debt which could lead to even more cuts in pell grants and a higher student loan cost down the road. Just to put that trillion dollar number in perspective for everyone, we could totally forgive every penny of Student Loan Debt with the amount of money Congressional Republicans are using to slash the Corporate Tax rate and still have money left over. Every penny of Student Loan Debt. But the Congressional Republicans dont plan to use that money to cut Student Loan Debt or lower the cost of college. It may propose to use the money to get gigantic tax giveaways to rich people and big corporations. So im sorry, i do not understand how we can focus just on helping students access federal student aid while ignoring the republican plan to drive up the cost of college for millions of families, a plan that could come up for a vote this week. Thank you mister chairman. Thank you senator warren. Senator murray, do you have additional questions . I do have some that i will submit. I want to make one point following senator warrens comments, i amconcerned about impact on low income students. We already have income inequality. We know that low and middle income people earned wages and salaries higher income people tend to build investments so if these kind of policies will have a greater impact, i perceive the comments. I think its been a productive conversation today. Weve heard a lot about the Financial Aid process and i think this is an important issue. I hope we can Work Together to broaden all the challenges we have in the Higher Education process and Work Together to have hearings that help us focus on that, so thank you senator franken, you have other comments or questions . Thank you jeremy, i like to associate myself with senator warrens remarks. This tax bill will hurt students in so many of the ways that senator warren underscored and while fafsa is important, its an important way to help get financing for college. The way, the giveaway to the wealthiest people in this country and to powerful corporations and the provisions that senator warren spoke about will have an enormous detrimental effect on students. And i think that i would just like to associate myself with her remarks. Thank you mister chair. Thank you senator franken. This has been very helpful. Thanks to all of you for coming and the staff, our committee staff, republican staff will want to follow up with you and your set specific suggestions this week as we develop a bill as part of a larger package to reauthorize the Higher Education act. One thing ive noticed is that sometimes we take our time, sometimes people dont like, that just by bringing up a subject and provoking a discussion, we can make progress. I think back to that National Meeting three or four years ago, weve made a lot of progress since then in terms of what we call the prioryear change which is unintelligible to most people but you can put your, you can, you dont have to file your application before you pay your income tax, in other words so that the commonsense change in the Obama Administration. Weve also worked with president obama endorsed our idea of simplifying fafsa and identifying a number of questions that can be eliminated and i think were all have a little better understanding of what were doing. So were at a point where i think we can come to a result. Let me see if i can summarize a little bit the suggestions that have been made. By several of you. But doctor rubin specifically, that one approach would be to separate be held grants area which would be three or 40 percent of the 20 million applications that arefilled out every year, thats a lot of applications , seven or 8 million. And ask three questions, all of which could be incorporated from the Internal Revenue service that people have reported. And let an applicant no, a, to be eligible for a telegraph and the amount. And that over that same sort of procedure you could let a person know that before they are admitted to college so they can use that money to shop around and you could even let them know in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades a can raise their sites higher and say i might be able to afford this and the fact is the average pell grant is about the same amount as the average Community College tuition and that in the country and most students here all this talk about expensive going to college and there is the expense but thats important to know. Is that just doctor rubins view or do the rest of you agree that it would be practical to separate out but pell grants and ill get to the rest of it after that. Doctor drager. With todays technology and the timing of prior years that you mentioned, im left with the question if we can get more data from the tax return terrifying data, we would have to follow up with the student on why not . Lets do that. If we want to use a separate index to calculate eligibility, thats a fine suggestion but to the extent that we can getas much as we can from information the federal government already has, thats , i would lean. So once is enough and that thats exactly right. I think its a greatidea and i think thechallenge of asking for more is the communication challenge. Its separating pell out, simplified, its an excellent idea. Ms. Williams. I also think so but taking into consideration for Homeless Youth who may be unaccompanied, there may be challenges to be parental information or them to be able to identify what their income bases are. Iq, doctor mcallen. I would agree. I think we still would have the challenge of working out those students who dont have to file a tax return. You need to give consideration to that. Let me ask this, let me go to all the others. Mister drager made the point that there are a lot of people who give out aid other than the federal government. And that institutions and other states would like to have more information. What do we do about those applications, thats two thirds maybe or 60 percent of the applications. One suggestion has been that the department of education would gather that other information and make it available. Basically imported from the information already given to the federal government from the irs to make it available to state and institutions but my question is if we were to separate out the pell grant in the way we describe, what about the all the other information that states and institutions want . Doctor rubin, lets start with you i still think theres a role for the federal government and i feel like usingtechnology, using the tax returns, we could get most of that information in. A colleague mentioned , i think part of it is to simplify it for those lowest income students. But part of reading it would mean that we tangled some of the cost on affecting family contributions and the affordability for other families so i feel like we could do a lot of this technology i think its worth separating but i think theyre still a federal role for providing that information and the work that mass is done, theyve actually shown that if you have a fairly simple form, you could get much of the way through including a separate state specific piece which would get all of the questions that colleges and states would need. Mister drager, has your organization agreed on how we can do that . There are two pathways forward. You could build in pockets of supplemental questions that may be on estate or state or school by school basis that could be appended to whatever the federal form is. Right now there are a dozen states that have supplemental forms to the fafsa. 200 schools that use the most wellknown institutional Financial Aid applications which is the profile. I think our goal is that we dont go too far down the road of having more states and more schools introduce a separate area and theres a tight rope were walking but i think if we can index more of the tax return and bring it over, including the underlying gradual data, i that gets us there. It would put us back to pre1992. If it fragments, thats right. I think its totally doable. I think that the Additional Information that contained in the esp which could be reproduced using information from the tax forms is valuable for state and institutional aid distribution and if it is the thing that brings people on board, i think its worthwhile. I think that my bike meaning would be towards more simplified systems that maybe wouldnt even have Something Like it esp but continuity is important. Were not starting from scratch so i think thats a fair consideration. Ms. Williams. I agree with what they said. Doctor mcallen. Im in general agreement for the two things we usually use within our system to determine institutional aid are the efc as well as pell eligibility. So to the extent we can get something that determines either of those, i think we would adapt. Really, the access is far more important to us that 100 percent accurate data for that determination. I would assume without asking that phasing in what we decide to do would be a wise step so that states and institutions and organizations could adjust to it and minimize the chance of a mistake by us or somebody else. I would think. Senator lauren, do you or senator franken . Thanks again for a very helpful hearing. I look forward to working with senator murray in developing a schedule of between the issues that she mention or issues that i think we all care about. Our committee has often in between other big issues work on the Higher Education act for about four years now and we have lots of good bipartisan proposals and there will be more to come so i hope we can have an aggressive schedule of hearings and roundtables and markups and do something in the First Quarter of next year and your participation today is a good beginning. I ask unanimous consent to submit a statement from the record for the College National Access Network and it will be included here in record and will remain open for 10 business days. Members may submit Additional Information andquestions for the record within the time that they would like. The next scheduled hearing will be tomorrow. November 29 at 9 30 on the nomination of doctor alex mazor to serve as secretary of health and human services. Thank you for being here, the committee will stand adjourned. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation]. [inaudible conversation] the. [inaudible conversation] Senate Help Committee there wrapping up his work today. The senate itself meeting at noon eastern to begin the day but we will return from legislative work at 4 pm eastern, considering the different nomination or the district of columbia. The confirmation vote on the plan for 5 pm eastern and negotiations continue on tax reform with the florida day expected to start tomorrow. President trump is on capitol hill this afternoon to meet with republican senators about the tax reform bill. Then he was going to be meeting at 3 pm eastern the white house when democratic leaders, thepresident to meeting with chuck and nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is, they want Illegal Immigrants flooding into our country unchecked. Are weak on crime and what to substantially raise taxes. I dont see a deal. Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tweeted this in response. Given that the president doesnt see a deal between democrats and the white house, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our gop counterparts in congress instead. Rather than going to the white house for a show meeting, we found the Senate Majority leader and speaker ryan to meet this afternoon. And House Democratic leader nancy pelosi sent this out. We dont have any time to waste in addressing the issues that confront us but we are going to continue to negotiate with Republican Leaders who may be interested in reaching an agreement. At the british house of commons this past week Prime Minister teresa may face several questions on exit negotiations as well as trade relations with the eu and border issues that we Northern Ireland and the republic of ireland. The president was also asked about the resignation of Zimbabwes President after 37 years in power and house transition british citizens living in the country. Questions to the Prime Minister. Question mister speaker