Making the FAFSA form simpler will open new opportunities for college-bound Memphis students | Opinion

• Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Maryville, is the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s education committee.

There are not many things that United States senators can do to cause 20 million American families—including 400,000 families in Tennessee—to say, “thank you.”

After five years of work, Congress is ready to do just that by shortening the Free Application for Federal Student Aid – the FAFSA – from 108 questions to two dozen, and eliminating the need for families to give their financial information to the federal government twice.

The FAFSA is the form that 400,000 Tennessee families, including 5,600 Memphis high school seniors and their families, fill out each year to apply for federal student aid.

But many more students and their families ought to be applying for federal student aid. A volunteer mentor with Tennessee Promise, our state’s program that provides two years of free community college, told me the FAFSA is so intimidating that the form has a “chilling effect” on families who are interested in sending their student to college.

Tennessee has the highest rate of FAFSA completion, but it's still too hard

The students we most want to help are often the ones most intimidated by this federal form. The former president of Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis told me he believes that he lost 1,500 students each semester because the complicated FAFSA discouraged students and their families from applying.

Former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam told me that Tennessee has the highest rate of students filling out the FAFSA, but that the form is still the single biggest impediment to more students enrolling in Tennessee Promise.

After the form comes the threat of being selected for "verification," a complicated process that stops Pell grant payments while a student scrambles to submit federal tax information or prove he or she did not have to file taxes.

Southwest Tennessee Community College administrators told me almost half of their applicants – approximately 9,500 – were selected for verification in fall and that process is even worse, they tell me, than filling out the FAFSA itself. This spring semester about 400 students who were registered for class still had not been able to resolve the verification and receive their Federal grant or loan.

My goal this Congress is to pass bipartisan legislation that solves this problem and completes five years of hearings and work by senators and by both the Obama and Trump administrations.

7 ways my legislation will help students in Memphis and all Tennessee

This legislation would dramatically reduce the number of questions on the FAFSA, as most experts agree that most questions on the form are unnecessary. Legislation already passed by the Senate last year would allow applicants to send their tax information from the IRS to the U.S. Department of Education with one click, which would answer 22 questions at once.

If Congress takes these steps, we will have made 7 big improvements for students and families applying for federal financial aid:

• One: Reduce 108 questions on the FAFSA to no more than 25.
• Two: Automatically transfer a student’s tax data to the U.S. Department of Education, which will dramatically decrease the number of students selected for verification.
• Three: Make sure families know they can use their tax information from the previous year to fill out the FAFSA, which means they can apply for federal student aid sooner. This allows students to apply to school in the fall, rather than having to wait until spring.
• Four: Allow students to find out as early as eighth grade how much Pell grant funding they may be eligible for, helping them make informed decisions sooner.
• Five: Make sure students know they can now complete the FAFSA on their mobile phones. I visited Sevier County High School in November with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and saw students zipping through the FAFSA app that the Trump Administration developed to make it easier for students to apply for federal student aid.
• Six: Increase the number of eligible students who receive the Pell grants by making is easier for more students to apply for federal aid.
• And seven: Help taxpayers by stopping $6 billion in mistakes – that is the amount the U.S. Department of Education estimates is issued in improper payments every year.

The Senate education committee is considering other steps we could take to make college worth students’ time and money, such as making it easier to repay student loans and reducing the amount of time colleges and universities waste on federal red tape, but there is already bipartisan desire to simplify the FAFSA process and reduce its “chilling effect” on the students we most want to benefit.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Maryville, is the chairman of the United States Senate’s health, education, labor and pensions committee.