The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has not been kind to college students and farming families for years, due to flaws in the program, farmers must label their machinery, land and small businesses as liquid assets, even though they’re not liquid enough to be converted into college funds. Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra is supporting legislation that will exempt those from being considered assets on the FAFSA application, which will open up the door for more farm kids to receive financial aid.
“Making sure that farmland and equipment and small businesses are not part of the process of identifying how much a family owns when it comes to fast law and grant programs. I have a senior in high school right now. I mean, I can’t imagine all her friends, they’re all farm kids, none of them would be able to get any dollars because they all own some land, or they have equipment or small business. So we’re going to change that.”
Feenstra said this is part of the greater goal to support farming communities and provide farm kids with an equal chance to pursue a higher education.
“Yeah, exactly. We’re the bread basket of America, and this is, this is, I mean, these are not liquid assets. I mean, you buy a tractor, a combine, or you buy land, you can’t just quickly change that into dollars to pay for your colleges, your kids with college education. So that’s why we want to make sure that’s set off to the side when people are putting their financials down in that facile form. Again, Biden went after the farming community on this a year ago, and we want to take it back away. We’re in, you know, we’re in the Trump now, and we support farming community, and we want to make sure that our farm kids can go to college and have the same considerations as every other kid in the country.”