A suggestion to remove the college financial aid form called Fafsa led to a discussion that touched on empathy, coddling and fraud.
Source: Readers’ Turn: Eliminate Fafsa? – The New York Times
Here is what I wrote – which means I think a lot of it should be eliminated, especially if it is misused.
“I don’t know much about FAFSA. I don’t have to because I know about colleges; and I have little doubt about what they do with the information they get from FAFSA.
I’m sure they don’t sit around and wonder how they can help students afford – or even get – an education. Here is what I think they do.
They surely use it for discriminatory pricing. They use it to determine how much of a discount (euphemistically called “financial aid”) they need to get a student’s “business”. (There is an excellent article about this in the NYT. A link to it is on my blog inside-higher-ed )
A better utilization of the information in FAFSA is the manipulation of yield (percent of acceptances who attend), and other such data. For example, they don’t want to accept students who aren’t going to attend.
Here is an example of how colleges use (or, more likely, misuse) data that shows how smart they are, how unaware they know their “customers” are, and how complicated it is to use the data they have.
One year Washington U. in St. Louis’ School of Engineering published the SAT of their admitted students. It was very high. I called them and asked if they knew the numbers of their “enrolled” students. I was told they did but that they weren’t allowed to give that out. (The link to the article is on my blog.) Keep in mind that only about 65-70% of Wash. U.’s “admits” actually attend that school. Also, keep in mind that most schools, especially the “wannabes”, are no different than Wash. U.”
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