The 153 questions on the current federal college aid form drives millions of families to just give up. The Obama administration wants to change that.
President Barack Obama wants to make the form much more
user-friendly.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the goal is to boost
college enrollment among low- and middle-income students.
The administration plans to shorten and streamline the online
application and create a Web application to use tax data families
have already submitted to the IRS. It also plans to ask Congress to
pass legislation that removes more than half of the financial
questions.
The American Council on Education, in a 2004 report, estimated
that 1.5 million students probably would have been awarded Pell
Grants had they applied for them.