The University announced Tuesday that it is making one small effort to reduce the headaches associated with the notoriously frustrating financial aid process. College Board's CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE application will replace University's normal financial aid application that accompanies the FAFSA - or Free Application for Federal Student Aid - form. Most important, the switch will help the University become more appealing to lower-income students by simplifying the financial aid application process.
Applying for need-based aid at any school can be a daunting and frustrating process, so any efforts to streamline it for future students merits attention. The University moved one step closer to this goal last year by putting the University's supplemental financial aid form on the Student Information System, making it more easily accessible, but using the PROFILE is a better option. For one, the PROFILE collects a more comprehensive report of a student's need, said Yvonne Hubbard, Student Financial Services director. The University benefits from more thorough information and the students themselves are better served with reduced paperwork and hassle.
The move to PROFILE is analogous to the University's decision to adopt the Common Application in 2008 to "ease access to applications from all backgrounds," according to a University press release. In this light, the use of PROFILE could be seen as part of an overall trend toward simplifying some elements of the application process. The goals of this kind of approach are clear: In addition to those listed above, colleges hope that participation in common applications will boost the number of students interested in their schools. The University is not the first institution to recognize these advantages - 270 colleges and universities currently use the PROFILE and 65 to 70 percent of entering University students who apply for financial aid already fill out the PROFILE for other schools, Hubbard said.
Some have expressed concerns about standardizing applications across higher education, but most of these issues seem less relevant to making financial aid forms uniform at different schools. For example, some admissions officers may argue that the Common Application reduces the flexibility of each school to tailor its application to what it looks for in students - not all institutions are created equal, after all. As an argument against the general trend toward conformity, this claim has merit. Still, the benefits seem to outweigh the downsides in most cases. Schools can offer customized supplements to the Common Application that allow them to evaluate candidates on their own terms while still not requiring all the paperwork to be duplicated.
As for the PROFILE, uniformity in financial aid applications appears to carry few of the downsides to standardization in general. Need-based assistance is primarily a numbers game, as its goal is to accommodate students from low-income households. When it comes to assessing straightforward metrics like income or grades, it is a uniform system's time to shine: The information does not vary by institution, so using consistent processes at each school simply leads to greater efficiency.
The key to deciding when to standardize in the future comes with knowing what information is truly distinctive by school. That may sound intuitive, but with certain criteria, the call will be subjective. For example, the use of a consistent style of undergraduate transcript across institutions would certainly simplify the applicant screening and review process for graduate schools and employers, helping to ensure that the most qualified students are offered the best opportunities. (Sound like a pipe dream? Remember that until 1975, so was the notion of using a single application to apply to many different colleges.) But can each college capture student achievement in the same manner? To some extent, reporting grades does not require much versatility - yet it seems that a common transcript system may be one step too far when it comes to encroaching upon collegiate independence.
As technology and data processing techniques advance over time, these types of questions will become more than just hypotheticals. Deciding between efficiency and differentiation will become more common, and schools must be prepared to identify where opportunities lie and where pitfalls abound.
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