Anti-family financial aid law punishes those with multiple kids in college
Timothy P. Carney
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The federal Department of Education plays a central role in determining what sort of financial aid families get when their kids go to college, and the new rules are blatantly anti-family.
The FAFSA form (“Free Application for Federal Student Aid”) determines eligibility for some federal grants, work-study programs, and subsidized student loans. Many colleges also rely on this form to determine what sort of tuition discounts they will grant families.
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This week, the Education Department rolled out its new FAFSA form, which is streamlined, as ordered by Congress in a 2020 law. The most important change in the whole process is that the Education Department now, as a matter of policy, discriminates against families with multiple children in college at the same time.
Under the old FAFSA system, the Education Department would take into account a family’s income, wealth, and some of their expenses in order to calculate the “Expected Family Contribution.” The EFC approximated how much money a family would have left over after covering basic living expenses. The old system then divided that EFC by the number of children the family had in college at the time.
That makes perfect sense. If a family is judged able to afford $30,000 in tuition next year and is sending two kids to college next year, it obviously can afford $15,000 per kid.
But the new formula doesn’t really care. The EFC is being replaced by the “Student Aid Index,” or SAI. The SAI is calculated similarly to the EFC, but, crucially, the ability to pay is not divided by students in college.
The Wall Street Journal reported, “The new formula looks at family members individually instead of as a family unit, said Dana Kelly, vice president of professional development and institutional compliance at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.”
It’s kind of a fitting nod to the cultural pathologies of the day: We consider people only as atomized individuals and value family at zero.
The old system included what was called the “sibling discount,” but it wasn’t really a discount. It was just a sibling count. It took into account that bigger families have more people and thus more expenses. This is unpopular these days when we consider children to be just another lifestyle choice. You chose to have a second child, why should we subsidize that choice?
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At least in this situation, the absurdity is crystal clear: The logic of the new system is that a family sending two kids to college can afford to pay nearly twice as much in tuition as a family with the same income and wealth sending only one kid.
Anti-family sentiment runs rampant these days. It’s just rarely as clear as it is in this FAFSA change.