FAFSA

The economic hardship for low-income families caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have another casualty: high school seniors accessing financial aid to attend college. Applications for federal and state financial aid for college are a leading...

ANN ARBOR—High-achieving, low-income students who received personalized commitment of financial aid are more than twice as likely to apply, be admitted to and enroll in a top-tier university, according to a new University of Michigan...

One lesson that Susan Dynarski learned from her long-standing campaign to simplify financial aid is that stubbornness—and a willingness to say the same thing over and over again—is critical to moving public policy. “As academics we are not...

Susan Dynarski’s recent article, "A fumble on a key FAFSA tool, and a failure to communicate," was published by The New York Times earlier today. The piece takes a critical look at the IRS shutdown of the FAFSA's data retrieval tool earlier this...

Susan Dynarski, a longtime advocate for simplifying the FAFSA (the financial aid application students and their families must submit for college), welcomes new changes and suggests future reforms in this Sunday's New York Times “Economic...

Once, she was a first-generation college student from a working-class suburb of Boston. Now, she is an internationally renowned professor of education policy with the ear of the White House. So Susan Dynarski knows that education can be...

Susan Dynarski's proposal to eliminate the FAFSA form was among the reforms championed by an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) writer and research assistant in an article published Tuesday, April 5.In "Fix student aid and FAFSA to help more...

“The focus and moral certainty that have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement have opened a rare window of opportunity for real and lasting change.” David Thacher, advocating for a reformed version of Broken Windows policing in U.S. cities,...

On October 20, Susan Dynarski delivered a powerful talk at TEDxIndianapolis: "Why financial aid is broken and a simple solution to fix it." The focus? Dynarski’s simple and cost-effective strategy for dramatically reducing a significant roadblock to...

Professor Susan Dynarski has been named a recipient of the "Public Service Matters" Spotlight Award by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) for her ongoing work on college affordability and student debt....

Last week, in her New York Times Upshot piece on higher education policy, Professor Susan Dynarski outlined a critical change in federal financial aid.According to the new rules, students hoping to begin college in September 2017 can file the FAFSA...

In this Sunday’s New York Times “Economic View,” Susan Dynarski explains why recent efforts to simplify the Fafsa, the financial aid application for aspiring college students, don’t go far enough. Dynarski’s prescription? Eliminate the form...

As Congress debates reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and with it the bipartisan FAST Act bill introduced by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), the Ford School’s Education Policy Initiative releases a timely new...

The "FAFSA-on-a-postcard legislation is gaining traction," writes LA Times reporter Carla Rivera in the January 6 article,"Move to simplify federal student aid application form gains traction." In the coming days, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN)...