What Did Aid Administrators Perceive to Be the Impact of PPY on Students and Aid Offices?

Copyright © 2019, Valerie A. Mockus. This article is published under a Creative Commons BY-NC license. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this article for non-commercial purposes, in both printed and electronic formats Through the 2016-2017 academic year, student aid applicants completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid used the immediately previous year’s tax information. Beginning in 2017-2018, students were required to use two-year-old tax return information creating a lag in the timeliness of financial health data used to calculate financial aid eligibility. This older data is called Prior-Prior Year (PPY) by the aid community. Community members in support of the change expected college applicants to have more time to apply for aid and make decisions. Others articulated concerns that use of the older data would increase the likelihood of families requesting professional judgements (manually intensive calculations with more recent tax data), therefore significantly increasing the workload. Early detractors worried the older tax data would erode the accuracy of targeting aid to the right students. This pilot phenomenological study investigates how financial aid administrators perceive the impact of the switch to PPY on students and financial aid offices. The study finds that the volume of professional judgements did not appear to increase, the Department of Education’s choice to re-ask for 2016 tax information and penalize students with discrepancies by withholding aid disbursements was objectionable, the administrative burden was worrisome, and college affordability was of great concern. It also finds that administrators, though never coming to a career financial aid intentionally, find their work deeply meaningful notwithstanding. Though the expected issue of an increased volume of PJs did not materialize, there was an unexpected issue of complying with comment code 399 requirements that arose, likely due to the Department of Education’s choice to not consult financial aid administrators during the design and implementation of PPY. As the first phenomenological study on PPY, this article provides administrators and researchers alike with insight into opportunities for improvement in future FAFSA changes. This phenomenological study explored the perceived impact of implementing PPY tax information on the FAFSA. Administrators reported fewer professional judgments than anticipated and unexpected hardship from comment code 399.