"Nearly 220,000 students will gain eligibility for the Pell Grant, a key tool for helping low-income students access college, when the federal government finalizes revisions to the system for applying for financial aid later this year, according to a new report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association," Inside Higher Ed reports.

..."Under the new FAFSA, students will not only have fewer questions to answer, they also will likely be eligible for more federal aid. Combined with changes in awards for previously Pell-eligible students, the net increase of total Pell aid is expected to be approximately $7.85 billion, an increase of about 25 percent over the current spending level, according to the report.

Experts say the alterations to FAFSA are significant and will have wide-reaching consequences for higher education. Several reports over the last few years have sought to document how the formula shifts would influence students’ out-of-pocket payments.

But the SHEEO report is the first to assess the impact of those changes at the state level, said Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO and author of the report. Burns used existing FAFSA data to model how students’ eligibility will differ under the Student Aid Index, or SAI—the new formula for determining how much a student is expected to pay for tuition and how much they should receive in aid—and how it compares to the previous Expected Family Contribution formula.

Similar analyses include a report from Brookings, released in April, which estimated that about 174,000 more students would be eligible for the Pell Grant. Other groups including the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, in October 2022, and Urban Institute used modeling tools, case studies and reform simulators to make their predictions."

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 10/26/2023