Dive Brief:

• One day after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced the development of a mobile app to help students fill out their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form on their phones, the Department of Education offered a presentation of the new app, along with a promise to get it into general use by the middle of 2018, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• In addition to letting students fill out their FAFSA form, the app promises to allow borrowers to manage their student loans in the app and also will allow students to check their credit score. Students could check on their remaining balances and set up an auto-debit payment system entirely within the app, according to New America Policy Analyst Ben Barett.
• There has been an increase in calls for FAFSA simplification, and witnesses to the program including NEA Analyst Clare McCann were impressed by the array of options included in the mobile app. However, she foresaw a substantial list of technological, legal and policy challenges that make a spring rollout particularly ambitious.

Dive Insight:

The announcement of the new FAFSA mobile app came on the same day that the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which focused heavily on the simplification of FAFSA; the push for a simpler process has been particularly important to Sen. Lamar Alexander, the chair of the committee. Additionally, Republicans in the House of Representatives are set to introduce legislation this week overhauling federal regulations on higher education. In addition to borrowing caps and the elimination of student loan forgiveness, the bill included proposals to simplify FAFSA. The legislation is likely to take a year to pass through Congress and could change significantly before passage, but FAFSA simplification remains one of the few bipartisan areas of agreement, in contrast with other aspects of the bill like for-profit institution deregulation which are likely to be particularly controversial.

At yesterday's hearing, Justin Draeger, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators testified that complexity in the FAFSA process was fine as long as the process for students and families was made as simple as possible. As the federal government moves forward on streamlining the financial aid process, colleges and universities must ensure that their staffing and technical knowledge are ready to match the moment in assisting students in the FAFSA and other aid processes. Students are increasingly more concerned about the cost of attending college. The news that student debt is causing many graduates to delay major life decisions like homeownership will only exacerbate the feeling, leading students to gravitate towards schools that garner positive reputations in assisting students in acquiring financial aid. Schools need to invest in financial aid counselors that will be comfort in operating financial aid counseling and tutorials entirely in digital, and especially mobile, environment.