Over 6,000 financial aid administrators and higher education staff registered for the 2009 Federal Student Aid Conference held in Nashville, TN from December 1st through 4th making this one of the largest aid conferences ever. Conference attendees were introduced to William Taggert, Chief Operating Officer for Federal Student Aid, at the opening session who encouraged the aid community to “embrace the opportunity for change” and invited administrators to “engage, advise and challenge us, as together we prepare to shape the future of student financial assistance.” Attendees also heard inspirational words from Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, who expressed his commitment to work under the leadership of President Obama and with all those involved in education “to enhance education in America, to lift our children and families out of poverty, to help our students learn to contribute to the civility of our great American democracy, and to strengthen our economy by producing a workforce that can make us as competitive as possible.”

If you missed the conference, no worries! For the first time ever, all of the general sessions and breakout sessions were video-taped and have been posted to the FSA conference website. Both the slides and the video presentations are available for viewing in the comfort of your own office (http://www.fsaconferences.ed.gov/program09.html).

The focus of this year’s conference was clearly on Direct Lending (DL), as over one-third of the breakout sessions covered a variety of DL topics such as cash management, loan servicing, reconciliation and a number of sessions for schools who are new to the DL program. During the annual federal update, the department announced they owned approximately 82% of all Stafford Loans, as a result of purchasing a large number of FFEL loans in 08/09. The prior year the department owned 21% of the loan portfolio. Department officials encouraged all schools to educate themselves about processing loans via DL and start conversations about how DL would be implemented on their campuses.

Aside from the push for DL preparedness, the federal update focused on information about the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) of 2009, recent pending legislation that includes simplification of need analysis, the American Graduation Initiative, a program to bolster college access and completion support programs, and a review of the proposed Direct Perkins Loan program. Department officials also reviewed issues regarding awarding two Pell Grants in an award year, stressing that although this creates extra work for administrators, “keep in mind this is free money for poor kids,” reminded Jeff Baker, Director, Policy Liaison and Implementation for FSA. FSA staff also called upon aid administrators to generate new ideas for the Experimental Sites Initiative and to think about alternative approaches to the administration of Title IV student aid as we all work toward increasing the number of college graduates in this country. If you’ve ever thought that “it would be easier if we did it this way,” it’s not too late to submit your ideas!

The hot topic during the Application Processing update was an introduction to the IRS Data Retrieval Tool that allows FAFSA on the Web applicants to request and retrieve their income and tax data from the IRS which can then be imported directly into their FAFSA application. This tool will be available for 2009-10 FAFSA filers beginning in late January, 2010. FSA has also focused on FAFSA on the Web redesign which reduces the number of questions and screens presented to applicants in efforts to simplify the application process for 2010-11.

To further encourage dialogue between aid administrators and the Department of Education, all conference attendees were invited to participate in a Town Hall meeting on the last day of the conference led by William Taggert and Bob Shireman, Deputy Undersecretary of Education. Aid administrators were encouraged to express their ideas about how to make the student aid process better and were invited to ask questions of the panel. Despite the underlying anxiety by aid administrators to come up with the resources needed to implement changes to aid programs, the crowd at the Town Hall meeting was quite positive. People seemed to embrace the opportunity to be heard and the department officials seemed receptive to new ideas, as well as empathetic to the additional burdens placed on hard-working aid staff. As William Taggert summed up, “I applaud your commitment and thank you for your dedication to ensuring millions of students have the resources necessary to pursue education beyond high school.”.