
Changes to college students’ financial aid packages caused by the political saber rattling of Congress’s sequestration talks last spring were updated almost in real time, an impossibility in campus financial aid offices of yesteryear.
Colleges and universities in February and March scrambled to let current and incoming students know that the aid available for their college education was in flux, subject to the whims of legislators who couldn’t come to an agreement on how to best solve the nation’s budget deficit.
Tara O’Neill, Marquette University’s associate director of the Office of Finance and Student Financial Aid, said if this sort of political crisis had threatened to alter financial aid awards already doled out to students in need of college funding in the mid-2000s, schools wouldn’t be able to make the proper adjustments and send updated information for days after changes tool effect – weeks, even.…Read More