{"id":17347,"date":"2013-03-12T15:41:41","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T19:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=17347"},"modified":"2013-03-12T15:41:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T19:41:42","slug":"bright-futures-scholarships-may-soon-require-less-paperwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/03\/12\/bright-futures-scholarships-may-soon-require-less-paperwork\/","title":{"rendered":"Bright Futures Scholarships May Soon Require Less Paperwork"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Amanda Jaeger\/flickr<\/p>

High school students who want Bright Futures scholarships for college would have less paperwork to submit under a bill being considered in Florida.<\/p><\/div>\n

With no discussion or fanfare, the Senate Education Committee has approved a bill that would remove a small piece of red tape for students who want to receive Bright Futures scholarships<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under the bill, SB 680<\/a>, students would not be required to submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The FAFSA requirement went into effect with the 2011-12 academic year<\/a>.\u00a0The form is used by universities to determine the financial need of students based on family income.<\/p>\n

The proposal to repeal it comes down to paperwork.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, there\u2019s been a substantial increase in workload for the folks who have to process these forms at university financial aid offices.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In 2010-11, 70 percent of Bright Futures recipients filed a FAFSA. The following year, applicants had no choice but to submit the form, and that created 30,000 more forms than average to process.<\/p>\n

About one-third of FAFSA\u2019s each year are randomly selected by the U.S. Department of Education for verification, according to the Florida Board of Governors<\/a>,<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of extra forms to be double-checked.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are also debating how to grant in-state tuition to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants<\/a> after a federal judge struck down a state law. Previously, Florida determined the residency of students under the age of 25 using their parents’ information<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Out-of-state tuition is typically at least three times more expensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By law, students under the age of 24 must submit the FAFSA using their parents’ information<\/a>. But if the parents are not U.S. citizens or do not have a Social Security number, students could not submit the application and would not be eligible for Bright Futures.<\/p>\n

If the requirement is repealed, students won\u2019t have to disclose family financial information to be eligible for Bright Futures \u2013 which makes sense because the scholarships are merit-based and not based at all on need.<\/p>\n

Eliminating the required use of FAFSA might be necessary because of the federal court ruling.<\/p>\n

Parents also expressed concerns about identity theft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the Legislature approves the bill, students who are only seeking Bright Futures money will no longer have to fill out a FAFSA starting this July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With no discussion or fanfare, the Senate Education Committee has approved a bill that would remove a small piece of red tape for students who want to receive Bright Futures scholarships. Under the bill, SB 680, students would not be required to submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA requirement went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[785,1014,72,274,1046],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}