New SFS Policy Seeks to Simplify Financial Aid Process by Getting Rid of It

With Penn’s tuition costs rising faster than ever, Student Financial Services has a moral obligation to each and every student member of Penn’s Board of Trustees to ensure that the University is maximizing its profits. In order to fulfill that promise, SFS asks students to fill out lengthy forms stuffed with borderline-invasive questions, including but not limited to: questions about the profits students are making from their... private farms.

SFS has consistently caught flack for its difficult to parse policies and opaque methods for distributing financial aid. In the spirit of innovation, Penn’s administration is trying out a fun new solution: getting rid of financial aid.

“We’ve heard lots of feedback and one critique we’ve consistently gotten is how confusing the whole financial aid experience can get. We’re usually in the business of throwing money at a problem to make it go away so we decided to try something totally out of the box by implementing a solution that wouldn’t cost us a dime,” an SFS representative told UTB in an interview. Strangely enough, during the interview, the representative was simultaneously watching YouTube videos about the world's most expensive objects. He said he was deciding how he was going to use his share of Penn’s newly vacant $237 million financial aid budget to treat himself to, well, whatever the hell he wants.