 |
| "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." |
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado have struck a blow for simplicity in the federal student aid program, a program that is entirely too complicated. As they explained in an op ed essay in the New York Times earlier this week, the two senators have introduced a bill to reduce the complexity of the standardized federal student aid form, which every college student must fill out to qualify for federal student aid.
Currently, this form, commonly called the FAFSA form, has 108 questions and is 10 pages long. With its attached instructions, the entire form is 82 pages long!
Senators Lamar and Bennet propose to throw this form out, which is so complicated and time-consuming that many students simply forgo applying for federal student aid.
They want to substitute a form that only has two questions: What is your family size? What was your household income two years ago?
Senators Lamar and Bennet's proposed legislation would also reduce the number of federal student loan programs to three: one program for undergraduates, another for graduate students, and a third for parents who borrow money to pay for their children's college education . And, perhaps most importantly, they propose just two repayment options: the standard 10-year repayment plan and an income-based repayment plan.
Lamar and Bennet's op ed essay did not provide any details about what their income-based repayment plan would look like. Would it be a variation of President Obama's Pay As You Earn plan, requiring borrowers to pay 10 percent of their discretionary income over 20 years or would it would be a less generous variation? But the simplicity of having a single income-based repayment plan will reduce the confusion many college-loan borrowers experience when they try to convert their 10-year repayment plans to long-term income-basde repayment plans.
Senators Lamar and Bennet acknowledged the input they got for their reform proposals from Susan Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton. Ms. Dynarski is co-author of a provocative Brookings Institution study that recommends payroll deductions as the most efficient way for students to make their loan payments if they are enrolled in income-based repayment plans. (I discussed this proposal in my last blog posting.)
Efficiency-Driven Reforms Are Good But Radical Reforms of the Federal Student Loan Program Are Necessary
Senator Lamar and Senator Bennet have made sensible proposals for improving the way the Federal Student Loan Program Operates. And Susan Dynarski and the Brookings Institution have also made reasonable proposals for collecting student-loan payments from borrowers who participate in income-based repayment programs.
Without a doubt, these proposals will help make the federal student aid program operate more efficiently. But they won't help bring the federal student loan program under control. These proposals do nothing to stop the runaway cost of higher education. They do nothing to address the abuses in the for-profit college industry, and they do nothing the ease the strain on millions of student-loan debtors who are already in default.
We won't be getting serious about addressing the student loan crisis until we amend the bankruptcy laws to allow worthy college-loan debtors to obtain bankruptcy relief, publicize the real student-loan default rate, and rein in the for-profit colleges. Unless we do these things, other reform proposals will do nothing more than put a band-aid on a gaping wound.
References
Lamar Alexaner & Michael Bennet. An Answer on a Postcard. New York Times, June 19, 2014, p. A25.
