This article was originally published on The 19th on February 15, 2024.
Taylor Montz wasted no time filling out financial aid forms for college. A senior at KIPP High School in Camden, New Jersey, she plans to be the first in her family to pursue higher education. She started using her latest Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) shortly after it was published online on December 30th.
But she said she was confused by a question on the form that was worded as a double negative. “I couldn't go back and fix it, even though the website said in theory I should be able to edit it.” She tried to get help from the Federal Student Aid Hotline, but to no avail. was. “The line is so congested that it's hard to connect.”
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The new, shorter FAFSA was supposed to be easier to use. In fact, nearly 4 million people have filed the 2024-2025 form since it became available, according to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “And many people are going through these forms in record time,” he said at a press conference Monday. For others, the opposite is true. Due to technical issues, families are unable to amend, complete, or submit their applications. Students whose parents do not have Social Security numbers are a major group of applicants who are unable to fill out forms due to system glitches.
A $1.8 billion error in the formula that specified how much aid students would receive also caused confusion because it did not take inflation into account. As a result, some students who were eligible for financial aid were reportedly told they were not. The Department of Education has since resolved this issue, but other issues remain, including the inability of universities to process family financial data until just before the May 1st deadline when students are normally required to enroll in university. This has led to concerns that this may be the case. Experts say students choose a college without knowing the financial support they may receive, refuse to take risks, or simply lose patience with the process altogether. Experts say it may be postponed.
“This is a huge problem,” said Will del Pilar, senior vice president of the Education Trust, which advocates for academic achievement for students, especially students of color and low-income students. “It's going to raise equity issues, especially for students who are most dependent on financial aid. And low-income students and students of color are going to have to rely on financial aid to help fund their college education. I know that I'm even more dependent on it. Why would I do that if I don't know in advance if I'll get enough help or if I'll have to leave it in an institution? I am concerned that this will have a significant impact on students' decisions to attend university.”
Approximately 17 million students complete the FAFSA each year, most of them young women. During the 2021-2022 cycle, just over 11 million female students applied for aid using this form, compared to about 6.5 million male students. Del Pilar noted that many students who suspended higher education at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic never returned, and that vulnerable students are opting out of college due to FAFSA issues. I am concerned that I may have to take a year off from school. He doesn't want that trend to repeat.
Del Pilar, who is also a former financial aid counselor at Loyola Marymount University, said universities cannot even begin making financial aid awards for students until they receive an applicant's financial data from the federal government. Ta. He added that universities are keen to get that information, as are scholarship organizations like the Native Forward Scholars Fund.
“One of the key documents we use to verify is the [student] All you need is a FAFSA form,” said Angelique Albert, CEO of Native Forward, which provides scholarships to Native American students. “It's going to show you the awards they've earned from the federal government. It's going to show you their expected family contribution, and then it's going to show you what they have left to go to college. So… What are the unmet needs to attend a particular school? We base our funding on that document.”
FAFSA errors and processing delays can limit the size of scholarships students receive from Native Forward, Albert said. Another problem is that the mental burden placed on students, whose futures often depend on the results of this financial aid, is enormous.
Destiny Bingham, a counselor at KIPP High School in Camden, where 75 students, including Montz, are applying to college, said these students are “extremely anxious.” “'What does my future hold?'” Bingham said. “I also have these concerns. Because I've been working with this student for her four years. We've been having these conversations for a long time, but it seems like the students who most need these resources, which is the reason the FAFSA exists, are not getting the benefit of it. ”
Montz said he wants to study computer engineering and attend a technical college, and is considering attending two schools. She said one is better than the other, but she can't decide until the university submits her with a financial aid award notification on the FAFSA.
“I want to go to a better school, but the better schools are more expensive,” Montz said. “I don't want to be in debt for the rest of my life, so it affects me not knowing how much money the FAFSA will give me.”
In response to growing criticism of the FAFSA rollout, Education Department officials announced both this week and last week that they are taking steps to ensure colleges can obtain and process student financial data as quickly as possible. These actions include the launch of the FAFSA College Support Strategy, in which the agency deploys federal personnel to support high-need institutions, including tribal colleges and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). are doing.
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“We're launching a concierge service,” Cardona said Monday. “We are allocating $50 million in funding for technical assistance and support and will release tools to help institutions by February 16th to ensure all universities have their systems ready. We are planning to release a test version of Student Records to allow you to do so.”
To speed up the financial aid application process, the Department of Education announced Tuesday that the IRS data exchange will allow families to retrieve income information from their tax records. This eliminates the need for families to hand over sensitive documents that must be verified, making it useful for applicants with illegal immigrant parents who do not have a Social Security number, or for applicants who wish to avoid providing information revealing their immigration status. may be particularly beneficial. Illegal immigrants pay an estimated $12 billion in taxes each year.
Despite steps to make the FAFSA process “less burdensome for families,” as Cardona said, it's unclear when other wrinkles in the new form's rollout will be ironed out. A department spokesperson said Monday that the agency has not received the funding it needs from Congress to hire additional customer service representatives to help students and their families navigate FAFSA challenges. Additionally, the spokesperson said the department cannot pinpoint when applicants whose parents do not have a Social Security number will be able to fill out the forms. Officials confirmed to the paper Wednesday that students in such predicaments can fill out a paper FAFSA.
“Our hope is to make the online form available to all families, including parents who do not have a Social Security number, in the coming weeks,” officials said. “While paper forms are currently an option for families, waiting for online forms may also be an easier option for many families.”
Some experts say completing the FAFSA virtually is still the best option, as paper applications will reportedly be processed after digital applications. But simply connecting to the Internet can often be a challenge for Native Forward scholars, Albert says. Many live in rural communities without access to broadband, so the organization is making special arrangements to help them fill out financial aid forms online.
“They can’t even do it from their phones because they don’t have access,” Albert said. “We have a student emergency fund, and from that fund we've been paying for gas for scholars to travel to cities so they can access the internet. That's an issue in some communities. I think it’s something we need to address on a broader scale.”
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Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which trains educators to teach in a national network of public charter schools, said there is no time to lose for students and their families when it comes to the FAFSA. The latest version of the FAFSA is released several months later than the standard. Typically, his FAFSA for the next academic year will be released on his October 1st. Given the delays and rollout difficulties, Jeffries wants the government to quickly provide applicants with the information they need. Many of KIPP's students come from economically disadvantaged areas and are also the first members of their families to attend college, so he doesn't want them to face additional barriers.
“Each delay certainly increases the risk that some of the young people who are able to enroll and graduate from college will not be able to do so,” he said.
On Monday, 106 education leaders and their colleagues in the Senate and House urged Cardona to address the issue of the new FAFSA in a letter led by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Patty Murray, and Rep. Bobby Scott. requested Mr. Mr. Sanders is the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Mr. Scott is the ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee. Lawmakers ask the Department of Education to clarify how it will notify the public of further delays in the FAFSA process and provide a clear timeline for plans to help families make the best decisions about their children's higher education asked to do so.
The FAFSA update is expected to make an additional 610,000 students eligible for federal Pell grants and an additional 1.5 million students eligible for the top Pell award, the lawmakers noted. But they also note that the main source of problems with the 2024-2025 FAFSA deployment is that the Department of Education will release new forms after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020 to ease the process. He also pointed out that this was due to the fact that they did not receive sufficient funds for the For millions of applicants.
“The federal government wanted to make the FAFSA form simpler, because the FAFSA form can be a little bit complicated, and we wanted to make it easier for families to fill out and for institutions of higher education to We wanted to make it easier to provide accurate and clear information to the financial aid award,” Jeffries said. “It was very well intended. Unfortunately, the execution of that intention was not ideal.”
