The politics of education (a rant against financial aid)
Yanik Ruiz-Ramon
Taxes were due yesterday. W00t w00t. So were financial aid forms. Now, I have to make a major complaint. Why do all of the financial aid forms simply ask us for the SAME information that is on our taxes? This would make sense if they didn’t have access to our taxes, but one of the first things they want in your financial aid package is…a copy of your tax forms.
And why do we have to pay $25 for the CSS Profile? It is simply another regurgitation of the information that you can find…in our tax forms.
Same with the Business/Farm Supplement. All of that information is on Schedule C…in your tax forms.
Personally, I think these CSS profiles are extortion. The same information is given in tax forms, the FAFSA and the Penn financial aid forms.
I know my Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) better than I remember my mom’s birthday. I’ve entered my AGI into so many fields, forms, and…you probably don’t want to know where else I’ve put it.
It is a tremendous waste of time and duplication of effort, not to mention that this arcane process requires a PhD in insanity. You also need a degree in creative statistics. Penn should give financial aid applicants their diplomas just for making it through the aid system.
Now that everyone is filing their taxes electronically, I don’t see why we can’t just send Penn a copy of the data. Add to that a supplemental form with our PennID number and some other university-specific questions. Voila! We’re in business.
This overcomplicated process is extremely unfair towards the people who need it the most. Doing this without an internet connection, scanner, printer, telephone and an illegal copy of Photoshop ™ would be a nightmare. If you can coordinate signatures on documents A,B, Q, Z and F with parents who live 300 miles away while scanning W-2s, 1040s, 1040EZs, 1040As, Schedules A, B and C, and 1098Ts without any of the aforementioned equipment…you are probably God, or Obama.
It gets to a point where you can’t blame Timothy Geithner and Tom Daschle for messing up their taxes. It’s a sad thought that even the man tasked with saving the US economy can’t get these forms right. It’s a good thing he didn’t have to apply for financial aid as well.
How spoiled do you have to be to complain about filling out paperwork in order to get a free education. I would fill out every single FAFSA application that I ever have 20 times over just out of sheer gratitude, and not complain for one second.
@reader
The problem isn’t filling out paperwork, it is duplicating work that is unnecessary. There is no reason to take the same information and duplicate it across multiple forms. It takes time, costs money, and causes stress.
There may be a reason to the madness, but I don’t see it. I think that the entire process needs to be streamlined and rationalized.