Brevity Is the Soul of Wit

While the recent economic downturn has left more families than ever before in need of financial aid, the difficulty of the paperwork that financial-aid applications require has reached an unnecessary high. In times like these, it is disheartening that the current Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form poses a major barrier to many potential applicants who need financial aid the most.

With more than 100 questions, the current form—which, ironically enough, was created in the early 1990s in an effort to streamline the financial-aid process—seems excessive and inefficiently constructed. Its length and complexity are so daunting that many have been driven to use paid professionals just to fill out the form.

Everyone from Congress to President Obama has complained about FAFSA’s structure, which is especially troubling given that, despite its prodigious size, it still fails to take into account assets such as some family homes and even businesses. Therefore, it succeeds in inconveniencing students but not in providing the information that schools actually need to make proper determinations in the allocation of their financial-aid resources.

The length and complexity of the FAFSA form may also have the unfortunate consequence of preventing some people in need from applying for or receiving financial aid. It is especially unsettling that the people hurt most by such a complex form are very likely those who come from families of lower educational status and who most need financial assistance to attend college. The Department of Education should therefore try to shorten and simplify the form in any way possible—though we hope that potential streamlining does not engender a wave of supplemental questionnaires required by individual schools.

To ensure that the sheer length and complexity of the FAFSA form does not discourage potential applicants from applying, Harvard should commit itself to offering assistance to applicants who cannot decipher the unfortunately labyrinthine financial-aid process on their own.

Paying for college is already difficult enough—the last thing we need is for the paperwork to be an obstacle, too.