After FAFSA delays, the federal government will provide staff and funding to help colleges.
The Department of Education is boosting resources at certain colleges and financial aid agencies after weeks of complaints from students, college counselors, schools and congressional Republicans about delays in the rollout of the new FAFSA form.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Monday his agency will deploy federal financial aid workers to under-resourced colleges and universities, including historically black colleges, to ensure schools have the tools to process federal financial aid forms. Additionally, the department is launching a concierge service within the Office of Federal Student Aid to assist a broader range of schools and is providing $50 million in funding to nonprofit organizations that perform FAFSA processing tasks to assist schools in this work.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is critical to colleges, students, and families in determining tuition costs. This form is used to calculate a student’s eligibility for federal grants and student loans. States, universities, and scholarship programs use the data families enter on the document to determine the amount of funding to provide to the student.
Through a series of bills, Congress directed the Department of Education to overhaul the forms by the end of last year. The idea behind the change was to make the form faster and simpler to complete and increase the amount of financial aid for low-income students. However, the smooth rollout of this form has accelerated the time it takes for colleges and students to make financial aid decisions.
College counselors, higher education institutions, and Republican lawmakers have wondered aloud whether these challenging introductions could leave low-income students in trouble and even discourage them from enrolling in college.
Cardona said on a call with reporters Monday that one of the reasons for the challenge is Congress’ decision not to provide more funding for the Federal Student Aid Administration to implement the changes. Congressional Republicans have accused the Education Department of prioritizing student loan forgiveness at the expense of other priorities, such as FAFSA reform.
“I understand the delay has been frustrating for the agency,” Cardona said on the phone. “I felt frustrated too,” he said. “But we must keep in mind that we are overhauling a broken system.
“We are being asked to deliver more for less,” he added.
In the first few days after FAFSA launched on Dec. 31, families had trouble even accessing the form. Then last month the Department for Education said data entered by households on forms would not be sent to universities until mid-March, several weeks later than expected. Initially, the Department of Education failed to implement changes to take inflation into account when determining students’ aid eligibility. The Department of Education is currently in the process of resolving this issue, which would result in $1.8 billion in additional support for students, but it is a major cause of delays in sending data to schools.
As part of Monday’s announcement, the Department for Education said it would send testing batches of student records to schools within the next two weeks so colleges can prepare and address system issues.
However, delays in transmitting official records mean colleges have significant time to design financial aid offers and less time students and families have to make decisions.
Because of these obstacles, a coalition of financial aid and college access organizations is urging schools to extend the deadline for asking students to attend their schools. In a typical cycle, many colleges ask students whether they will attend by May 1 and pay a registration deposit.
On a call with reporters, a senior Department of Education official said Cardona suggested it would be “prudent” to look at whether colleges could give students more time and flexibility to make decisions.
“Make no mistake. A better FAFSA will be transformative, and we are determined to get it right. We must and we will,” Cardona said Monday.
