Paying for College

My group is working on better financial aid assistance to help pay for college. We realized that everyone has a difficult time paying their way through college. Either they are worried during their college years or after when they are trying to figure out how to pay off the loans that don't go away.
We have a financial aid office on campus but our group agreed that those who work in the office have made our experience a unpleasing one. So, the point is to first get a consensus on how students are paying for their tuition and how worried they are about it. Once we can figure that out we can figure out what kind of help the students might need. Maybe they need to know where to go for some more help than just FAFSA because we all know that FAFSA is not as helpful as it supposed to be.
I hate to say it but the one thing that is supposed to help determine students financial need for school does not help at all. On paper a student is looked at their parents income even if they are not receiving any help from their parents. My parents were not able to afford to help me with my tuition but yet I had to put their income in for aid when it should be based on my income because I was the one struggling with paying my own way.
So, the point of our project is to help students out in the sense of acting as an extra person to help them figure out how they will pay for schooling. So, we want students to know they are not alone.