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Colleges Will Be Required to Use Standard Student-Aid Disclosure Form

January 27, 2012, 2:42 pm

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau described today the feedback it has received on a draft “Financial Aid Shopping Sheet,” which it and the Education Department released in October, and the White House announced that use of the shopping sheet would be required of colleges.

The sheet is a draft model disclosure form for the letters that colleges send to students offering financial aid, and it’s intended to help students better understand the type and amount of aid they qualify for, and to make it easier for them to compare aid offers from different institutions. Back in October, some colleges said they feared the model would become mandatory, and as part of President Obama’s speech on college costs today at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the White House said the updated form would be “a required template for all colleges.”

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  • calgrad

    More “Do as we say, not as we do” from the most anti-education Administration in my lifetime.

    There’s a clear correlation between federal government involvement in K14 education and both higher costs and worse outcomes.  Why should higher education be any different?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tracey-Lehman/1098487773 Tracey Lehman

    Would they like to to just go ahead and take care of awarding, hearing SAP appeals, teaching classes, maybe accreditation as well?

  • 22086364

    The most anti-education administration in your lifetime?  Do elaborate.

  • katisumas

    It’s a form clarifying what the offer of student aid (taxpayers’ money) entails.  It’s obviously directed at for-profits and their often naive ”customers”  but just about all of us can benefit from it.  There are plenty of families who have trouble  figuring out the jargon some financial aid award letters are couched in. 

    And then, since the student will eventually have to repay it, don’t you think they need to know what they are signing?

    How does standardization of letters of award of FINACIAL AID has anything to do with curriculum and teaching?

    I suspect you’re either naive as well, or you’re paid by the for profits industry.

  • katisumas

    I don’t think Calgrad is going to elaborate.  Anyone who confuses a requirement of standardizing letters of awards for FINANCIAL AID so that (a) the student and their families can compare the conditions of one offer with the others and (b) the student is aware of what she/he is signing.  You know, substantial debt.

    What on earth has this has to do with the federal govt involving itself with K-12 education?  Of course I wouid agree with Calgrad that the Bush administration forcing teachers to “teach for the test” has been a disaster, and the Republican state governors who want to follow suit in higher ed are creating the same situation.  Luckily, Obama stated that “teaching to the test” is/will no longer be acceptable, so hopefully we can look forward to the next generation of freshmen starting higher ed (including community colleges) knowing how to write an essay. 

    Do you suppose that by using K-14 instead of K-12, Calgrad is lumping community colleges with high schools? How ignorant and elitist is that! I hope it’s just a typo.

  • katisumas

    Is this discussion thread taken over by commentators paid by for profit educational corporations?

    How else to explain the objection to transparency in tax payers’ funded student financial aid?

  • troymclure

    Because financial aid eligibility changes based on the students enrollment it will always be difficult for most students to compare financial aid packages from different schools unless they are experienced with the system.

  • tema8354

    No it is take over by people tired of being given unfunded mandates and told to lower costs at the same time.  We have mandated consumer information that no one reads because it is too much.  It will cost money to reprogram existing systems to put awards in this format.  Why?  Our awards are transparent.  The word Loan appears in each and every award that is a loan.  It is already a requirement.  Obviously you have never had to sit with a parent who looked at a a Cost of Attendance budget and been asked why the university was charging them to travel.  People don’t read so no amount of “transparency” will fix that.
    If things are aimed at for profit schools, have the guts to write the rules that way.  They are making distance ed so complicated that the only ones who can affoard to deliver it are those who make a profit doing it.
    Ok, my rant is done,

    A frustrated aid administratorE

  • archman

    If it is a standard form, everyone will be on the same page. Standardization improves efficiency, not the other way around. This would be true for administrators as well as it would be for students. You should be happy about this… your staff is no longer at the mercy of the college “doing its own thing” whenever and however it likes.

    You sound like you have been at “the mercy” of your college fiddling about with its financial aid bureaucracy for quite a while. This news should thus be a huge relief to you! Heck, just imagine all of the tutorial and support help that will make itself available, from the feds, states, and individual colleges themselves. When everyone uses identical paperwork, confusion and misinformation greatly diminish. You just have to get over the preliminary hump, is all.

  • tema8354

    Archman, one of the problems with email is it seems like you are serious rather than it being sarcasm.  It is not the college that is fiddling, it is the micro managers in Washington DC that create this problem.  Different schools have different clientel and therefore have different needs. 

    There was a time when you could get a car in any color you wanted as long as it was black.  That was effcient, but not terribly useful.  You seem to assume that once ED has control of something that they will not change it on a whim at the most inopportune moment.

    I can’t imagine what relm of academia you work in that you want things controled from Washinton, but it may be that you would not like your area controlled but have no problem with others.

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