Obama’s FAFSA filing date change will make student aid application process easier and more helpful

Changes in FAFSA reporting requirementsPresident Obama is working on removing barriers to students obtaining financial aid for which they qualify. Changes to the FAFSA filing period’s submission date will make the application process faster, easier and enable students to get earlier financial aid award notification. This will provide graduating (and transfer) students with valuable information they can use to help identify the best college match.

The transition means that:

  1. For the 2017-18 school year, students can submit the FAFSA as early as October 1, 2016 (two months ahead of the current submission date).
  2. Students will submit their 2017-18 school year FAFSAs with year 2015 financial information.
  3. 2017-18 school year is the first year that “prior-prior” (in other words, 2 years back) financial information for parents and student will be used for the FAFSA.
  4. Most parents and students will be able to use the IRS automatic retrieval tool to import tax return information directly into the FAFSA without needing to type it in (because 2015 tax returns filed by April 15, 2016 will have been processed by October 1, 2016).
  5. PELL grant award information will become available to graduating high school students (and college transfer students) months earlier in the college application process. This will aid families in selecting a school that offers the right combination of academic and financial opportunity for the student.
  6. In order to accommodate the new FAFSA submission date, filing students will fill out two FAFSAs in calendar year 2016:
    1. The school year 2016-17 FAFSA after the old submission opening date on January 1, 2016;
    2. The school year 2017-18 FAFSA after the new submission opening date on October 1, 2016. (See chart above.)
    Year 2015 financial information will be used for both the 2016-17 school year and the 2017-18 school year. (See chart above.) Year 2016 financial information will be used for the 2018-19 school year FAFSA. (See chart above.)

    From the Federal Student Aid website:

    On Sept. 14, 2015, President Obama announced significant changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) process that will impact millions of students. Starting next year, students will be able to do the following: read more

Don’t want to be replaced by video lecturers? Up your game.

MOOC Wordle

MOOC cowPhilosophy professors at a public California University have spurned an offer to be replaced by online courses which are part of the edX initiative to offer lectures from Harvard, MIT and other top-level colleges to students at other universities in the form of video clips delivered on line. The San Jose State University professors point out in a public letter that the drive to cut education costs by replacing hands-on teaching with film clips constitutes a gross degradation of the educational experience their students will receive; that video teaching isn’t half as good mind fodder as reading a textbook is; and that it would be crazy for them to passively agree that a video lecture can teach students better than themselves, as real life professors, can. read more