While policies making FAFSA completion mandatory are a hot topic in college access, there is much to learn about how they play out, the authors explain.
They point to Louisiana, the only state to fully implement the requirement, as an example. One in three public high schools there had FAFSA completion rates of 65% or more before the policy was implemented, compared to four in five now. And the FAFSA completion difference between low- and high-income school districts closed by more than seven percentage points in a year as a result of the change.
