It's an age-old question for parents and students: How to pay for college?
Here in Connecticut, the P.A.C.T. (Pledge to Advance Connecticut) program will pay for first-time college students to attend community college in the state.
How about federal money you don't have to repay? Or, if you need a loan, maybe you can qualify for a lower-interest, federal, fixed-rate loan.
To tap into any of these funding sources, parents and students have to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, otherwise known as “FAFSA”
But a couple of years ago, the Connecticut Department of Education became alarmed by the relatively low numbers of students statewide who were filling out the FAFSA form. To help get the FAFSA completion rate up, the state instituted the "Connecticut FAFSA Challenge," where schools that both qualify and participate get benefits to compete to see which can improve FAFSA completion rates the most.
Ajit Gopalakrishnan, chief performance officer at the Department of Education, joined "All Things Considered" to explain why everyone thinking about financing an education should fill out a FAFSA form.
He also talked about why the "FAFSA Challenge" increased FAFSA completion rates by 8% and why he thinks the rates previously had dipped below 50%.
