The Financial Aid Information Page, on Internet’s World Wide Web, has been accessed by more than 400,000 aid-hungry students. The page now has a new address, as well as a new sponsor.

Mark Kantrowitz, owner and founder of the FinAid Corporation and the page, recently announced that the National Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) will sponsor the page for the next two years with a renewal option. Started by Kantrowitz in 1994, the page’s new address is: http://www.finaid.org/.

In December of 1995, Kantrowitz announced that he would no longer be able to maintain the page after his graduation. At that time, NASFAA offered to sponsor the page. “NASFAA is proud to sponsor the financial Aid Information Page so it can continue to provide valuable information to students and parents,” said NASFAA President Dallas Martin in a press release.

Kantrowitz said he had about 12 offers for sponsorship. Kantrowitz said he chose NASFAA because it is committed to seeing students benefit. The page will receive funding from NASFAA, but Kantrowitz would not disclose the amount. He said he will receive no personal compensation. “The idea is to help people. Everybody wants to go to college,” Kantrowitz said.

In exchange for its sponsorship, NASFAA will receive added exposure by having its logo on the web page. It will also receive help from Kantrowitz in setting up its page. In addition, Kantrowitz will serve as an advisor to NASFAA’s Electronic Services Committee at the NASFAA Conference, July 14-17, in Denver.

With the help of NASFAA, the page will be able to offer more services to users with less cost to Kantrowitz. “Currently, the page is out of my own web space and I’ve already spent around $10,000 this year,” he said. He said he is also spending about 40 hours a week on the page while trying to complete his degree.

NASFAA’s sponsorship will enable Kantrowitz to hire one to two individuals to assist in maintaining the page.

Some services currently offered free of charge on the Financial Aid Information Page are:

*Access to FastWEB, an online searchable database of more than 180,000 private sector scholarships, grants and loans.

*Advice on identifying scholarship scams and a list of suspicious scholarship opportunities.

*Several financial aid calculators, including a loan repayment calculator and a savings plan designer.

*Links to college and university financial aid office Web and Gopher servers.

Kantrowitz plans to elaborate on the calculator concept of the page to assist students in picking the right aid. “Students don’t always realize what they can pay back. They need a tool to help them calculate,” Kantrowitz said. He also plans to enlarge the bibliography of financial aid resources, already on the page, by 50 percent.

Kantrowitz, a computer science Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, became interested in financial aid during his own search for aid as a high school junior. In 1993, Kantrowitz wrote his own book about financial aid, titled Prentice Hall Guide to Scholarships and Fellowships for Math and Science Students.