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Tuesday, January 29, 2019

The Importance of Advocacy

Submitted by Val Meyers, Michigan State University, and Michelle Curtis, University of Minnesota

The role of the MASFAA Advocacy and Legislative Issues Committee (ALIC) is to assemble talking points that our members can use to influencing legislative or regulatory efforts.  We do this to educate legislators and their staff about the needs of students and families, the work that we do as aid administrators, and how a change in law or regulation can help us with our common mission – to promote access for students into an institution of higher education.

Recent events have proven that advocacy can also be vital during a sudden change in conditions, such as a government shutdown.  In this case, the closing of the Internal Revenue Service left families unable to obtain documents vital to receiving financial aid.  As schools began trying to work through the start of the new term in January, with bills due and parents unable to pay, we had to develop scenarios that both adhered to regulations and helped our families.  In the background, we knew that Federal Student Aid (FSA) was working to publish new guidance on alternative tax documents.  NASFAA and all of our legislative affairs staff in DC were sharing impact statements as more schools began reporting the frustration of unverified applicants who had no financial aid to pay their bills.

Before the Dear Colleague Letter was released on January 9th to allow alternative documents for verification, schools were doing what they could (extending the due dates of registration bills, cancelling late fees and interest, or even advancing institutional aid to cover the minimum payments).

But it’s important to note that this change didn’t start with the shutdown – the shutdown just made a crisis out of an existing annoyance.  We all knew, for example, that the requirement for the Verification of Non-Filer documents put a burden on our neediest students and families.   The same could be said of those tax filers who, without a credit history, couldn’t use the online tool to get a copy of the tax transcripts and were thus limited to the request by mail option, which cost them more in time and effort.

FSA was already on the way to revising the requirements, as they announced at their annual training at the end of November.  This is likely to have been in response to advocacy from financial aid administrators, both individually and through their associations at the state, regional, and national levels.

With this is mind, we welcome thoughts on items should we advocate for in the future.  What are your major pain points?  What one law or regulation would you change if you could?  And how can MASFAA ALIC help you in that effort?  We welcome your feedback.

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