The number of high school seniors—or their parents—completing the federal form for college financial aid, the FAFSA, is way up this fall, even as many Americans grow more doubtful about the value of higher education.
Filling out the financial aid form matters because it’s often a critical step in the college process, and it’s closely tied to whether students enroll in college the following year.
Sean Sobush is a high school senior in Florida. He’d heard from a friend’s older sister that completing the FAFSA used to take several hours. “I did go into it expecting it to take the whole afternoon,” he says. But this fall, when he opened his laptop at a local Starbucks and navigated to the online form, it took only about 15 minutes.
Read more at NPR.
