Screen capture of FAFSA web page (foreground), Texas Tech campus (background)
Four years ago, Congress ordered a simpler version of the FAFSA – Free Application for Federal Student Aid used by millions of students and their families.
The new form was supposed to be ready last October 1.
Now it’s supposed to have a “soft launch” this October 1 and be fully implemented by December 1, said Mary Booker, assistant vice president of financial aid & scholarships at Texas Tech.
The question she keeps hearing, she said, is, “Are you sure it’s gonna open December 1?”
The delay also leads local universities to have concerns about students putting off college.
The program’s delay led to Congressional hearings this week. More on that below.
“I would say that 100 percent of students who file the FAFSA were affected last year in one way or another in varying degrees,” said Robert Hamilton, executive director of financial aid for Wayland Baptist University.
That’s more than 17-million students for the 2022/23 application cycle, according to the U.S. Department of Education website. Without aid, low-income students cannot afford tuition at 95 percent of colleges according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
FAFSA delays got in the way for some students at Wayland Baptist, Hamilton said.
While the problem is the same nationwide, the impact is different for Texas Tech University, Wayland Baptist and Lubbock Christian University.
“I think in many ways we’re just at the mercy of the Department of Education,” Hamilton said.
Booker saw things differently.
“It has pushed back all of the normal processes that we would do over the summer. But it should not have negatively impacted the students to the point where they would feel like they can’t continue on with their education,” Booker said.
She thought this would eventually be very positive. FAFSA changes will make the application easier but she acknowledged the problems.
‘Choosing not to ever attend’
Hamilton said, “My biggest concern with the FAFSA is it appeared to me that our most needy populations, our most at-risk populations, were the most affected.”
Hamilton did not have exact numbers for Wayland Baptist, but knows some students changed plans.
“I’ve had conversations with families who were choosing either to stay local and attend a local university or community college – or to take a gap year,” he said.
“Gap year” means putting off college.
“Sometimes you have students where their high school counselor is their driving force to get every thing they need submitted in their college application,” Hamilton said. “I’m concerned that they won’t have that support network a year out of high school, and they may end up choosing not to ever attend college.”
Colleges are offering payment plans.
But in some cases, students are redirecting their attention to community colleges. The Texas Tribune reported on one such case and said, for example, Paola Torres qualified for free tuition at Austin Community College. Torres wanted to attend Abilene Christian University, according to the Tribune’s story.
Lubbock Christian was able to contain the problem to a small number of students, according to Becky Wilson, vice president of financial assistance.
“There have been FAFSA processing delays all over the United States. However, because LCU has such a small population of students compared to TTU and Wayland, we currently have less than 10 students affected by these delays,” she said.
“These students will not be assessed any late fees for current billing charges, nor will they have a hold put on their record for academic advising for the spring term which begins in October,” Wilson said.
LCU has 1,566 students enrolled this semester. Tech has more than 41,000. Wayland has 1,100 on its main campus but about 4,000 total across all locations.
Booker said Texas Tech handles about $400 million a year in federal student aid.
“It will impact every institution, but it will impact us differently,” Booker said.
And she added, state aid is not impacted by the FAFSA problem – only federal aid.
Reform became disaster
Congress passed a law in 2020 to streamline FAFSA – reducing the application from 100 or more questions to, in some cases, 18.
Here’s an example; instead of making students fill out complicated tax information, the system was supposed to get that information automatically from the IRS.
It was supposed to begin last October 1. It didn’t.
A 90-day delay turned into 161 days, which turned into 197 days and so on, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a bipartisan agency working for Congress.
Congressman Burgess Owens R-Utah, a subcommittee chairman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, held a hearing this week with witnesses from the GAO.
“Normally, if somebody is this incompetent, they’re fired,” Owens said during the hearing.
In response, the witnesses testified the Department of Education knew in August 2022 there was going to be a delay. Things got worse a year later.
GAO witnesses also testified there was 9 percent decline in first-time applicants, about 432,000 applications as of the end of August.
The Department of Education then went on an aggressive campaign to convince students to start applying again and mostly the application numbers recovered, according to the testimony.
“There were over 40 technical issues with the initial rollout,” said Melissa Emrey-Arras, a director with GAO.
Another witness, Marisol Cruz Cain, also a director with GAO, said the department used outside contractors to build out the new system.
“There’s really no incentive structure in the contract to hold that contractor accountable for being on time,” Cruz Cain said.
The department did a terrible job of communicating with schools, the witnesses said. And they did a terrible job of communicating with the public.
The GAO website said out of 5.4 million calls to the department’s call center, 4 million went completely unanswered. That’s just for the first five months of the 2024 application cycle. People did not know what to do.
Low-income students were hit the hardest.
“The percent decline in submissions was largest for those with incomes of $30,000 or less,” said Emrey-Arras.
The GAO recommended the department hire more staff for the call center and redouble its effort to get participation among low-income students. There were also recommendations for holding contractors more accountable.
What’s next?
The Department of Education asked for $400 million for the new FAFSA system, Owens said. The request remains pending in Congress.
In the meantime, Booker encouraged all students and prospective students to fill out the FAFSA just as soon as the website opens.
“We will provide as much support as we possibly can. … We have advisors standing by, ready to help. We are launching webinars for families to meet with us,” Booker said.
Hamilton said, “We will tell everyone that our financial aid office is here to help. We try to provide clear information the best that we know.”
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