(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s U.S. Senators — Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst — are co-sponsoring a bill to make sure small business owners and farmers don’t have to list land and equipment as assets on their child’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA.
Grassley says farmers are land and asset rich, but cash poor, with assets tht can’t be easily sold to pay for college. After an update in the FAFSA forms, Biden Administration rules for the current school year required parents who owned farmland as an investment to list it as an asset — but parents who own land they’re farming on had to list their land as an asset, too and Ernst says it meant farm kids got less federal aid for college.
The policy was reversed last year, for the financial aid applications for the 2025-26 school year. The bill Ernst and Grassley are co-sponsoring makes the policy permanent. Grassley says that way a regulation writer in the federal government can’t change it back.
