Students are finding it harder to pay for their education, housing and living expenses; often, government aid simply doesn’t cut it.
Some, hoping to get more “free money,” lie on their Free Application For Federal Student Aid to receive more grants and better loans. While times may be hard for students, we need to be honest in financial reporting. This, coupled with improved methods of auditing and fraud monitoring, will increase the equity of our financial aid system and all students will receive a more fair share of aid.
Each year, students fill out their FAFSA forms in hopes that they will be blessed with a healthy helping of state and federal grants combined with subsidized loans. While the grants may be free for students to take, they are not really free. Every time a student takes a grant, we spend tax dollars ““ and another student is denied that funding.
With the current system, there is room for manipulation and downright fraud. Every time manipulation and fraud occur, students who otherwise might receive aid are denied and have to pay out of pocket or not attend college. This creates inequity between those who know how to abuse the system and those who do not.
Although students who commit fraud might not feel any negative ramifications, they cause another student, who in reality is worse-off, to make do with too little money. Students in the middle or low income brackets are already stretched to the breaking point. Removing the fraud that exists would likely ease the suffering of many students, and FAFSA would do what it was originally intended to do.
Audits of individual students’ FAFSA reports are a useful tool that exposes some of the fraud that occurs. While they are not the only solution to the issue, they help to uncover problems that exist within the financial aid system.
According to an audit released by the U.S. Department of Education in 2008, more than $1.5 billion dollars was released to students whose need did not appear to be legitimate or was overstated. Such a large amount of misappropriated financial aid is unacceptable when many students are struggling to pay for their education. In a time of economic uncertainty when some students are forced to forgo college, to spend more than $1.5 billion on students who do not necessarily qualify for federal funding is ridiculous.
In order to create a more equitable financial-aid process, we must ensure that students are all able to get a fair share of financial aid based on their need.
While audits are an effective way of finding out who has lied on FAFSA reports, there needs to be a more accurate way of identifying which students are receiving undue aid.
Whether it is in the form of being forced to substantiate claims more often or imposing harsher punishments for fraud, we have to deal with the issue. This may be a hard issue to resolve, but it is incredibly important if all students are to have equal access to a college education.
Overcoming the difficulty the government has in ensuring accurate reporting is only one step in solving the problem; we need to have a stigma attached to this behavior, which is essentially stealing.
While student aid fraud is not a commonly discussed or debated topic, many of us know people who do not accurately report their financial situations. Although it is not likely that we will end a friendship over such an issue, we should not just accept it as harmless behavior.
The ability to provide equal education necessitates that we do not just accept that financial aid manipulation exists and is not a big deal.
No one denies that students and their families stretch themselves thin even with the government-provided financial aid. Although those students who lie may need extra help, there are less-fortunate people who may need it more. All students will be able to receive a more fair helping of financial aid if the system is reformed.
E-mail Feeney at
dfeeney@media.ucla.edu.
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viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.