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At a time when President Obama has promised to increase the number of college graduates dramatically in the U.S. by 2020, students and parents find themselves facing staggering tuition and fees at both private and public colleges, while also facing high rates of unemployment, stagnant wages, and decreased home values—not exactly a recipe for success. What is clear is that for students, both traditional and non-traditional, to afford an education and a chance at a better life, massive amounts of financial aid must be made available. But, as a recent study shows, not only do most parents and students believe college is “unaffordable” for most families, they also feel overwhelmed by the financial aid application process.

A study commissioned in November 2010 by the College Board, a 111-year-old non-profit association that works to connect students to “college success and opportunity,” found that a lack of knowledge was also prevalent among respondents. While 70 percent of parent respondents and more than 90 percent of student respondents felt that a college degree is “more important than ever,” nearly half of the parent respondents weren’t aware of the cost of attending a public institution of higher learning in their home states.

The report based on the study entitled Cracking the Student Aid Code—which surveyed 1,000 parents and 1,250 students of low- and moderate-income backgrounds—came to the conclusion that early awareness of the true costs of post-secondary education and the ways in which federal aid can help to meet them is vital to helping more students graduate—and with less debt. In an effort to help create a more straight-forward student aid process, MTV joined with the College Board to sponsor the Get Schooled College Affordability Challenge.

“Today’s confusing financial aid process is a roadblock to college access and completion for far too many students,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton in a Capitol Hill briefing in January. “Improving performance in higher education is critical to our country’s future. We can’t do that work without a simpler federal student aid system that is more effective for students.”

The contest invited current and prospective college students to come up with new digital tools to streamline the financial aid process for applicants. Organizers of the contest say that hundreds of submissions from students in 48 states were received.

And the winner is…

The three finalists, announced in January, were given the opportunity to work with “global innovation firm” frog design for two weeks to develop their ideas. In March, the public was invited to vote for the winning concept based on video demonstrations by the finalists. The winner, announced April 4^th, was rewarded with a $10,000 cash prize and her project will be brought to fruition by MTV, the College Board and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a development budget of up to $100,000.

Devin Valencia, a recent graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas won the competition with a social media tool she calls “ConnectFund.” It utilizes Facebook to automatically connect students with scholarships based on demographic information already provided through their Facebook profiles and activity.

“The good news,” says Valencia, “is that there is over three billion dollars available to college students every year through private scholarships. The bad news is that they are hard to find and complex to apply for. ConnectFund will provide that starting point for students using a tool they already use, Facebook.”

The 24-year-old Valencia was presented with her award in a ceremony in which President Clinton handed her a giant check. The former President emphasized in his remarks that by 2018, 63% of the jobs in the U.S. will require at least some college education. (Watch a video of Clinton’s speech at MTV.com.)

The runners-up

Finalist Dekunle Somade, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Maryland, came up with a concept that was designed to provide “low-income students who don’t believe college is feasible, don’t know where to start, and have no road map to navigate the confusing student aid process.” Like Valencia, he chose a platform that is familiar to most college students—cell phones. Somade’s idea leveraged text messaging (SMS) technology to organize financial aid and admissions information and create a new communications channel between financial aid officers and the students who need them.

The third finalist, 24-year-old Larissa Simpson who hopes to become a graduate student at The New School in New York, created “The Avatar Project,” which used interactive gaming to help students navigate the complicated maze that is securing financial aid in all its myriad forms.

Valencia told MTV that she will use her prize money to pay off her student loans.

For more on securing financial aid and related topics, read:

• Viacom-AP poll: Higher ed experts on how to narrow the college aspiration gap
• AP/Viacom survey: young adults see social media as key for jobs, education
• Budget deal protects Pell Grants for low-income learners
• 30 fastest-growing occupations
• AP/Viacom survey: young adults say education system doesn't understand them