WASHINGTON — Despite ongoing efforts to make it more efficient, the federal student aid system was lambasted Wednesday as being “untenable” and overly complex.
The criticism came during a Capitol Hill briefing titled the “State of Student Aid” and hosted by the National Association of Student and Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).
Brad Barnett, senior associate director of scholarships and financial aid at James Madison University, said the system is so complex that, when financial aid officers took a game-show-style quiz on repayment options during a recent professional gathering, most got the answers wrong.
“If a group of financial aid officers can’t correctly answer the majority of questions about loan repayment options, how can we expect our students and families to understand them as well?” Barnett said, noting that currently there are eight repayment plans.
Barnett also lamented how new regulations make it difficult for financial aid counselors to stay abreast of them all.
“The time for financial aid officers to deal with these is taking away from the time we have to spend with students and families,” Barnett said.
From gainful employment regulations to loan fee changes and the disappearance and reappearance of the Perkins loan program within a single school year, Barnett said, “We’ve reached a point where we’ve overly complicated the system.”
