Today the Department of Education will convene a public meeting to discuss the development of its model college financial aid award letter as required by the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This is the department’s first step toward creating a model financial aid notification format that could help prospective students better understand their options for paying for college.
The decisions students make based on their financial aid award packages can saddle them with debt that will follow them the rest of their lives. That’s why it’s so important to improve the format of financial aid letters. A new model letter has the potential to help students and parents make more informed, financially sound choices about where to go to college. But the Department of Education must make good choices about what belongs in these letters, and congressional leaders must work to make them mandatory.
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