Column:

FAFSA is flawed

Don't cheat the system.

By Jacob Houska

Published Feb. 20, 2009

Last week I asked my friend, who is somewhere around three times as smart as me, why he didn't go to anywhere after high school. He responded confidently, "I can't afford to go to a real school, so I'm keeping busy at a community college."

There has to be a way he could come up with the money. I mean, I came up with the money, and all I had to do was talk my dad into cosigning a student loan.

I could just tell him about how the government has a program for those who can't afford college expenses on their own get low interest loans and sometimes free money from the government to pay for it, right?

Sort of. If I told him that, I would almost be lying.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is flawed, to say the least. I've filled one out three times in my lifetime to date, and each time received a gigantic "Eat shit" from the government in return. But this never really made me mad until I talked to a few kids who saw significant results. If they were kids who came from poverty and made something of their life with little to work with, I would be extremely happy for them and for the fact that there is a scholarship program for people in their situation. Hell, I'd probably even write a column about them.

But one person I knew, who will remain anonymous in case what he did could get him some prison time, grew up with parents who had divorced and his father remarried. His mother, however, was scraping by on the money she won in her divorce, and rarely came into contact with her son or ex-husband, who were living a normal, happy life without her. But, as it often goes in family court, mom got custody originally, and they never really bothered to change it because the kid was 18 now and it didn't seem like it would change anything anyway.

So what does this kid do when it comes time to fill out his FAFSA for college? He fills it out as though he lives with his mom, almost exclusively, and she will be the one paying for college. Then the dude proceeds to get almost the equivalent of a full-ride scholarship to just about any college he wants, courtesy of the tax money of everyone else in the country.

Something about it just didn't seem right.

Then there are kids like me, whose parents can't and won't pay for college, and I still get nothing. I'm not complaining about not getting free tax money, but I have four brothers. Two of them are will be in college next year. Our nicest car cost less that $20,000. We're broke, and we still get squat.

Not really a big deal to me, until I hang out with people like the guy I mentioned above, whose garage is almost as big as my house, yet he still gets government grants for school.

After thinking about this bullshit -- er, anomaly for a while I finally came up for a solution to my really smart friend who now spends most of his time playing PlayStation and watching porn in his basement.

I told him to fill out a FAFSA and see what happens. Probably nothing, I warned, since his parents are normal, married, make about twice as much as mine do and he is an only child. But it couldn't hurt, I reasoned. It's not like he didn't have enough time on his hands. I was really only hoping to get him in the mood to do something with his life. Maybe filling out the paperwork would motivate him in some way.

Then the results came back. He said he'd be receiving an estimated $3,000 per year in grants, and close to another $10,000 in super low interest loans.

As his agent, I explained, "I want 15 percent."