mr. draeger, welcome. >> thank you. in 2014 senator alexander, you came and spoke to several thousand administrators and proposed a two-question fafsa. and that created quite a dust up amongst our membership. not because they don't wants to make the application simpler but when you look at the amount of grant aid delivered every year in this country, 40 billion whiches from the federal government. 58 billion of it comes from institutions. and another 25 billion come from state and outside scholarship providers. the context i want to paint is there are other entities awarding significant amount of grant aid that have a interest in doing two things. one, which i think we're pretty much all in alinement on is making it as easy as possible and that includes making the verification process as easy as possible. but the second piece is making sure we have accurate data to effect the financial strength of every family. at its core need-based grants come down to a few basic principals. the first is this. the primary responsibili

mr. draeger. dr. rueben, welcome. >> thank you, thank you, chairmn alexander, ranking member murray and members of the committee. thank you for inviting me to discuss simplifying the fafsa, the use and put expected armentano should not be related to the urban institute. the fafsa enable millions of students to apply for financial aid, as my colleagues have shown. but it also presents significant barriers for some students, most notably low income or first-generation students. it has grown more and more complex as officials try to ensure they provide aid to those who need it but only those who need it. policymakers have made some progress recently in some find the fafsa adding skip logic to illuminate limit irrelevant questions using the irs data retrieval tools and facing rewards on prior year income. but they're still work to be done. the application process is still cumbersome and the comp lex formula for the expected family contribution makes it difficult for students to know that aid eligibility b