FAFSA delays slow college choices and could foreshadow bigger problems

If this were a normal year, millions of prospective college students would have reviewed competing financial aid offers weeks ago and settled on their campus choice for the fall.

For them and their families, that decision represents peace of mind that their future path is clear. For campuses, it means knowing if enrollment targets have been met so the necessary number of course sections and residence hall space can be allotted.

But this year has been anything but normal — in Pittsburgh and on campuses nationwide.

Delays and other glitches from the problem-plagued rollout of the revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form have stretched to within two weeks of the traditional May 1 deadline for students to say where they will enroll.

Nationwide, the number of FAFSA forms completed by high school students is down nearly 40% from a year ago. Data from the U.S. Department of Education that arrived on campuses months late often has been flawed, further delaying schools’ ability to use FAFSA to make students timely aid offers.

Joel Bauman, senior vice president for enrollment management at Duquesne University, worries about a pair of unusual scenarios.

Given a shorter period to weigh aid offers, he said, accepted students in large numbers could make ill-advised decisions, resulting in a mismatch and a spike in campus transfers in coming years. Another worry is that, in the midst of all the confusion, some students will not enroll at all.

So extraordinary is the situation that Bauman and some of his enrollment peers nationally say the higher education community needs to put aside competition this spring and help students get through the FAFSA process — even if their school is not the ultimate pick.

“Let’s put aside the zero-sum game for a few days and really put ourselves in the shoes of the families who need our help, who may not be opening up our emails because they have moved on from us, but still need help and advice,” he said.

Duquesne to date has received about 9,200 FAFSA forms.

“We ought to be in the neighborhood of about 12,000,” Bauman said.

In recent weeks, some schools pushed back the May 1 decision deadline to May 15. But the number has been less than a groundswell, Bauman said.

‘We will do our best’

In Pennsylvania, those institutions include the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and the 10 State System of Higher Education member universities, including Slippery Rock, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Western University (California, Clarion and Edinboro) among others. Others, like Duquesne, are allocating extra time on an as-needed basis.

The aid process has fallen six months behind schedule in many cases. A year ago, for instance, Pitt sent out aid offers by October for its branch campus students and by February for the main Oakland campus, spokesman Jared Stonesifer said Tuesday.

“As of today, barring any additional technical challenges, we anticipate Pitt will begin sending financial aid offers to new students at all campuses the week of April 22,” he said. “We will do our best to work with families who need additional time and be as flexible as possible.”

Stonesifer encouraged main campus students and those at Pitt Greensburg, Johnstown, Bradford and Titusville to check financialaid.pitt.edu/update for changes.

Officials with Carnegie Mellon University had no update this week. Instead, Peter Kerwin, a Carnegie Mellon spokesman, pointed to a March 26 FAFSA update on its website.

It read, in part, “Carnegie Mellon has only started to receive FAFSA data and is more than five months behind its regular process.”

At Penn State, George Zimmerman, associate vice president for Enrollment Management and executive director of undergraduate admissions, said the university has seen a slowing of student commitments.

“With financing of a college education being one of the main concerns for families, the delayed FAFSA timeline is certainly a factor,” he said. “Despite some of the challenges with the back-end implementation of the new FAFSA, the actual aid-filing process has been simplified, and future students will see these benefits.”

Annually, about 17 million individuals file a FAFSA so they can be considered for federal aid, state grants and campus-level scholarships.

In response to a 2020 act of Congress, the Education Department set out to simplify FAFSA, reducing the number of questions from 108 to 46. But a host of delays and technical issues spilled over into this year, pushing back release of student information colleges normally would receive in early February.

In recent days, FAFSA tensions have risen in Washington, where speakers at multiple congressional hearings excoriated the agency for rollout trouble.

‘We feel like we’re flying blind’

Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, said young people’s futures are being jeopardized.

“Students have done all the right things — working hard for 12 years and navigating all the steps in their senior year of high school to continue to college,” she told a House subcommittee April 10. “They have big plans and the ambition to make them happen. But they have no idea how or if they can afford those next steps on their postsecondary path.”

She said the agency “has failed to give them timely information so that they can see college as an affordable reality instead of a distant, unattainable dream.”

As of March 29, her Washington-based network put the number of FAFSA forms submitted by high school seniors nationally at 40% behind a year ago.

Total submissions as of April 5 remain 38% behind last year, according to one data source, the FAFSA Tracker kept by Data Insight Partners, a company that works with education data.

Pennsylvania is running 34% behind last year. Neighboring states and their deficits relative to last year include West Virginia, down 42%; Ohio, off by 30%; Maryland, down 38%; and New York, down by 39%.

In March, colleges and universities finally began to receive delayed data they need from the Education Department to analyze student financial needs and assemble aid packages. But the rate of data flow and its reliability remain troubling.

Testifying before Congress this month, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill administrator said her school has received 60% of the FAFSA records it normally would receive, and many had to be reprocessed or were rejected for various issues.

Department guidance has been repeatedly issued, then pulled back.

“We feel like we’re flying blind, without a clear path, and we have yet to release a single official aid offer, despite having released our admission decisions,” said Rachelle Feldman, vice provost for enrollment at UNC.

“We’ve done, undone and redone work more times this year than I can count,” she said. “Our financial aid professionals … feel like the rug keeps getting yanked out from under them. If they feel like that, imagine how our first-generation families and students feel.”

In a statement last month, an official with the Department of Education confirmed a limited number of campuses have received FAFSA information and said more will follow. The individual did not say how many campuses have data.

During a swing through Connecticut on Tuesday, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona defended the agency’s efforts to reform FAFSA and said more students ultimately will be in line for financial help.

“We had a FAFSA system that was older than me. We’re fixing it. It’s hard work. We’re going to get it right. We have over 7 million processed,” Cardona told reporters. “We’re committed to getting it right and making it better every year. I know with this better FAFSA, we have up to 600,000 more students that have access to higher education and, for me, that’s worth fighting for.”

A recent FAFSA update on Carnegie Mellon’s website says students and families can make updates and corrections to their FAFSA forms, but details of how to do that were still forthcoming.

“Any issues — including miscalculations due to identified FAFSA technical issues — will need to be addressed by the Department of Education before CMU is able to provide an official financial aid offer,” it read.