Representatives of the Student Financial Aid Office say students haven’t experienced many problems with financial aid this year, but some ISU students beg to differ.

“More students are meeting the application dates, more are completing the forms on-line and fewer applications have been returned to us because of bad handwriting or other problems,” said Earl Dowling, director of financial aid. “That’s good news.”

Some students, however, view the office from a different perspective.

Laura Steele, senior in art and design, said she had some trouble communicating with the Financial Aid Office when her award changed this summer.

“I reapplied for my Undergraduate Research Assistantship [URA] this year, and one day this summer the URA office called to inform me that my finances had changed,” Steele said. “They said I was no longer eligible for a URA if I accepted my loans.

“It turns out that in the verification process, the number of people in my family who were in college changed from two to one,” Steele said. “My dad had finished his master’s degree a semester before he expected to, and that made the difference.”

Steele said she talked to an official at the URA office and was told they could not remedy her problem.

“I went back to Beardshear to a different office,” Steele said. “I talked to two people who said that unless there was another drastic change in my family contribution, there was nothing they could do.”

Steele said she looked at the numbers again and happened to ask the right question.

“I asked if I could take an unsubsidized loan instead of a subsidized loan, and they said, ‘Oh yeah, I guess you could do that,'” she said.

Steele said she thinks students must be “pretty aggressive” to get what they need from the Financial Aid Office.

“I went to three offices and talked to five or six different people, and in the end I had to ask the right question to get anywhere,” Steele said.

“I had to try really hard to get what I have out of financial aid,” she said. “I had older brothers that went to college, so I kind of knew what to do, but I think if I had just come out of nowhere, I might have given up trying.”

Anthony Samu, national vice president of the U.S. Students Association, said it is not necessarily to the universities’ benefit to give students the best deal on financial aid. He said universities have a more neutral stance.

“It’s a question of customer service and proper information,” Samu said. “We have this bureaucratic nightmare that is financial aid, and formulas that no one can really figure out, and it’s not necessarily easily accessible information,” he said.

Dowling said, however, that the ISU Web site provides everything any student would ever need to know about financial aid.

“Students are doing their homework more … they are relying on information on our Web site, which includes the calendar and our schedule,” Dowling said.

Samu said the U.S. Students Association also provides an informational Web site, Project Easy at http://easi.ed.gov, but that a Web site may not be enough.

“It comes down to proper loan counseling and information,” Samu said.

He said because financial aid accounts for less than 2 percent of the federal budget, problems such as loan counseling are often overlooked.

“We are trying to reinvent the way that we deliver financial aid,” Samu said.

“People think it’s a pointless gesture, but nine out of 10 Americans probably know what the G.I. bill is, while if you asked them what a Stafford Loan or Pell Grant is, they would have no idea,” Samu said.

Samu said $15 million of the president’s budget, which has to be approved by Congress, has been allocated for a public service campaign.

“Those first messages are the ones that enable people to ask the right questions,” Samu said. “Unfortunately, that’s what it takes now … the institutions need to know that someone knows about this and is going to hold them accountable.”

Casey Brown, junior in mechanical engineering, is an example of a student who had the wrong information.

“Last year, our taxes didn’t get done on time, so the FAFSA [Federal Application for Federal Student Aid] couldn’t get done,” Brown said. “We didn’t know that the deadline [for ISU] was earlier than [the University of] Iowa’s, where my brothers go,” he said.

Brown said he missed the deadline, but ended up getting subsidized loans that year.

“I went in [to the Financial Aid Office] to find out what I could get, and they said I was eligible for loans and just had to ask,” he said. “It worked out okay, but I should have gotten the grant money that my brothers got that year.”

Dowling said the university tries to reach students as early as high school, and provides information at orientation, as well as posting an ad in the Iowa State Daily regarding deadlines.

Steele said she still thinks the Financial Aid Office could do more to help students.

“I went to the financial aid meeting at orientation, but I found it not informational,” she said. “I just wish that when I go into the Financial Aid Office, someone would provide me with the information instead of me having to search high and low for it.”

Brown, a transfer student, said he didn’t think much of the orientation meeting either.

“I went to the financial aid meeting at orientation in 1996, when I thought I was going to transfer, and they didn’t really tell me anything new, so I didn’t go in 1997,” he said.

Steele also said she thinks the Financial Aid Office should inform students immediately if their awards change.

“This was the third year in a row that my financial aid has significantly dropped after the first award letter,” she said. “The last two years, I didn’t find out about it until my u-bill came in the fall. Apparently it’s not their policy to inform students of changes.”

Dowling said the financial aid office does notify students if their awards change after the verification process.

“We have a communications policy,” he said. “[Steele’s] situation is unusual. [She should] give me a call and we’ll try to figure out why it happened,” he said.

Another common situation in which a student has a high amount of family support listed on the FAFSA form but isn’t actually receiving support from the parents, does not have a good solution, Samu said.

He said students must demonstrate that they are independent, but the government assumes that people in college are not independent, even if they support themselves with an outside job.

Samu said the rule about independents changed in 1992 because some people were abusing the rule.

“A lot of high-income families were setting their children up to look independent, and the children were getting full grants,” Samu said.

He said being recognized as independent became more cumbersome for students, and the people who are able to navigate and understand the regulations tend to be wealthy, while the lower-income people are penalized.

“They squashed that loophole, and threw out a lot of students who should have been independents in the process,” Samu said.

Brown said he doesn’t think the rule is necessarily fair.

“On the FAFSA, they go by what your parents should or could be paying, but if your parents aren’t contributing, you’re kind of getting the shaft,” Brown said.

Samu said the FAFSA is very important, because 70 percent of all financial aid comes from the federal level.

He said grants account for less than 20 percent of student loans today, with 80 percent being student loans. Samu said 25 years ago, 80 percent of financial aid came in grant form.

“It’s undergone a complete flip,” he said.

Samu said since 1978, the amount of aid given hasn’t kept up with inflation, with college costs being about double inflation. Samu said this results in “humongous gaps” in financial aid.

Samu said his group has been trying to work on the balance of grants to loans, most recently by decreasing the interest rate of student loans.

“We have asked for, and are in the process of, passing a law that would result in a 0.8 percent decrease in the current interest rate,” Samu said.

He said that decrease would save the typical student, who deals with a $10,000 total loan, about $1,000, while graduate and medical students would be saving thousands of dollars.

Dowling said the university is also working to change the ratio of grants to loans.

“We’ve been working for years to get more grant money for students,” Dowling said. “The problem is that if the government boosts our money in one area, something has to be cut in another area. No one wants to give up their pet projects.”