Faulty financial aid application form makes it difficult for students to plan their enrollment

WASHINGTON (AP) — After an extended summer of technical difficulties, most prospective U.S. college students finally applied for federal financial aid — an annual process that was disrupted by a botched change to the system.

The number of highschool seniors who accomplished their application for federal student financial aid was down 9% from the identical time last 12 months, according to the National College Attainment Network. That number jumped to 40% within the spring, when students typically need to submit the forms to give schools enough time to prepare their aid packages.

How much the FAFSA issues will affect the variety of students who attend college stays to be seen, advisers and consultants say. But the delays have actually modified where students have enrolled, as many students have been forced to select a university with limited details about their financial situation.

As considered one of the few black girls at her suburban Chicago highschool, Adjovi Golo looked forward to college as a time when it wouldn’t be so hard to be seen and heard. She hoped to attend Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta.

Federal financial aid calculators told her she would likely qualify for $15,000 in loans, grants and work-study programs, but her FAFSA wasn’t processed by the May 1 deadline to commit to college. She called the FAFSA hotline 11 times to resolve the difficulty, receiving a distinct suggestion every time.

Meanwhile, DePaul University in Chicago offered her essentially the most merit scholarships. Without a full financial aid package from either school because her FAFSA was pending, she decided to enroll at DePaul reasonably than risk taking over more debt.

Golo moved into DePaul’s dorms in August. She loves her roommate, the campus, and her professors.

But one wonders what might have been different.

“I felt like I was cornered,” she said. “Part of me, like 75 percent of me, doesn’t regret it. I love it here. But another part of me wants to wait.”

The decline in FAFSA completion has been particularly painful for students who already face barriers to enrolling in graduate school, including low-income students and students of color. Advocates worry that the delays — on top of the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated affirmative motion in higher education — will affect where and whether many individuals go to college.

In theory, says Katharine Meyer, a senior fellow on the Brookings Institution, “we’re going to see less racial diversity among the student body and less socioeconomic diversity among the student body.”

Areas with high rates of poverty and places with higher shares of black and Latino residents saw a 20% greater decline in accomplished FAFSAs than higher-income areas, according to the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Its evaluation also found that students in those areas were twice as likely to submit incomplete FAFSAs.

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“It’s too early to tell how bad the decline in enrollment will be, but it’s not too early to recognize the risks,” said Peter Granville, a research fellow on the Century Foundation.

For students who cannot pay their entire tuition and costs out of pocket, nearly all types of financial aid—institutional, state, and federal, including eligibility for federal loans—require completion of a FAFSA.

The 2020 law directed the Education Department to simplify the FAFSA, which had been criticized as tedious and difficult, especially for families without college experience. But the 2023 launch of the simplified form has been beset by bug after bug — it went live late in December, with students encountering glitches and hours-long waits for assistance on a hotline.

Emmily Almaraz, a third-year student at Texas Christian University, said she filled out the form this 12 months in lower than 20 minutes. But the students she helped as an intern at a university access organization weren’t all as lucky.

Despite spending hours on the phone, one student couldn’t get through the verification process for parents who don’t have a Social Security number, which happens to some immigrants. Ultimately, the coed decided to delay registering until spring, Almaraz said.

“It’s really discouraging for some kids who end up finding out that just because they’re missing one piece of information, it can set them back,” Almaraz said. “It can cause them to pay for an education they can’t fully pay for.”

College housing has change into an extra hurdle for students whose families are reluctant to put down deposits without knowing more about financial aid, said Jesse Hendrix, executive director of College Possible Texas. Many are stuck with expensive off-campus options or can’t secure housing in any respect.

Some students accepted to four-year colleges are opting for cheaper two-year programs closer to home, advisers say. Chandra Scott, executive director of the nonprofit Alabama Possible, said she has reached out to state colleges, urging them to prepare for a last-minute influx of students.

“They’re going to hold out as long as they can because they might really want to go to that four-year institution,” Scott said. “But if they don’t have the financial aid resources they need to go when the time comes, they’re going to have to start making tough decisions about whether to skip a year, which we hope they don’t do.”

Counselors and advocates say students who don’t go straight to college after highschool tend to face greater obstacles to pursuing higher education. While some states have programs to help students return to school, only 4 in 10 students who don’t go straight to college after highschool accomplish that inside a decade, Granville said.

“Once you decide to wait a year, it becomes a more lonely journey,” he said. “That can hinder someone’s chances of ultimately completing their degree.”

Some students proceed to work through FAFSA issues even after enrolling. In Chicago, Golo filed a paper FAFSA in June to try to get a finalized aid package from DePaul, but she was told the agency had a backlog of paper documents. Golo said the college didn’t ask her to start paying until the documents were processed.

“I’m just scared to take the money out knowing that I might be able to lower it in a few weeks because I don’t know when it’s going to come,” Golo said of her financial aid package. “It could come tomorrow. It could come in a few weeks. It could not come for a few months. But my future is very much unknown right now.”