On the first day back to school following winter break, Jennifer Fichamba, a college and career readiness specialist who works with high school students, woke up earlier than usual. The decision wasn’t part of a New Year’s resolution, instead she wanted to see if she could access the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA.
The form is key to getting financial aid to college students. The government uses it to calculate eligibility for federal student loans and grants. Many schools, states and private scholarship programs also rely on the information provided by the form to decide how much of their own money to dole out.
Typically, students and families can start filling the form out in October. But a major overhaul required by Congress delayed its release until December 31, 2023. Fichamba figured based on messaging in online training and elsewhere that the form would generally be ready that day.
“My son is currently a junior in college, I was like, this is perfect, I’ll be able to look at what the new updates are,” as part of the process of applying for his financial aid and then communicate with her students about the changes when they returned from break, Fichamba said. But that plan has proved elusive. Every time she’s tried to log in, she’s been hit with a message that maintenance is being done on the site.
Fichamba’s experience mirrors others who have complained across social media about the glitches. She worries they could impact her students’ access to aid, including by deterring some from completing the form.
“It’s very frustrating from my perspective as a parent, but also as a person who is helping families,” said Fichamba, who works at a Seattle-area high school where many students are the first in their families to go to college. The challenges logging onto the form make it more difficult for her to guide students and families who have little experience with the financial-aid process.
Most immediately, Fichamba has a program scheduled for January 17th to help families fill out the FAFSA. On Tuesday morning, students were asking whether the event would be moved because of the glitches. Fichamba said she’s hopeful the kinks will be worked out by then. “The students are concerned, but I’m just doing my best to reassure them that it will be fine,” she said.
Overhaul aimed at directing more aid to low-income students
In overhauling the FAFSA, lawmakers and officials at the Department of Education aimed to direct more financial aid to low-income college students. They looked to accomplish part of that goal through changes in eligibility for Pell grants, the money the government provides to low-income students. But in addition, they hoped a shorter, more streamlined form would encourage more students who had been deterred by the process to apply for aid.
Now, Fichamba and others are worried glitches surrounding the new form could scare off or create confusion for students the changes were designed to help. The December 31 launch came after months of delays. Congress required that the Department of Education publish the form by the end of 2023.
Even if everything had gone smoothly, students and families were already facing a time crunch in submitting the FAFSA by certain priority scholarship deadlines for state, school and private colleges. The delays in releasing the form also mean that many students and families will have less time than typical to evaluate financial aid offers — or how much they’ll actually pay to attend a given college.
In part due to the pressures, college counselors, financial aid professionals and the media (including us) advised families over the past several months to submit the form as soon as possible. Now, they’re being stymied in their efforts to heed that advice.
“The website has been working intermittently,” said Teresa Steinkamp, the advising director at the Scholarship Foundation of St. Louis, who works with low-income students and families on the college application and financial aid process. “They are taking it down for maintenance and that is frustrating for students and families who have already waited several months for the FAFSA to even be open.”
As of Tuesday morning, Steinkamp said she had worked with two students to submit the forms. She watched one student provide their electronic signature and hit submit. Nonetheless, the student received an email from the government saying their financial-aid eligibility couldn’t be calculated because the form was missing a signature.
“There are some stressors for students and families and if any of those stressors are coming as a result of glitches in the system that’s extra unfortunate,” she said.
Karen McCarthy, the vice president for public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said overhauling the FAFSA was such a large undertaking that her organization didn’t expect it to go completely smoothly.
Still, “even by soft launch standards, how things went over the weekend was challenging for students and families,” said McCarthy, whose organization represents college financial aid administrators. NASFAA’s members are the people who use the information from the form to calculate financial aid offers. “We don’t know at this point exactly how many FAFSAs were successfully able to be submitted or for how long the FAFSA was actually open and available for completion.”
“I unscientifically checked several times a day,” and was unable to log on, she added, “but maybe I was hitting the bad times? We are watching it very closely, we are concerned by what we’re hearing.”
The Department of Education didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency has said that the new FAFSA is currently available “periodically” as part of the agency’s “soft launch.”
“We will initiate pauses for site maintenance and to make technical updates as needed to provide you with a better experience,” the agency said on its website. They added that families that submit their form during the soft launch will have their information saved and that if the form is unavailable when students and families try to access it, they should try again later.
“You will have plenty of time to complete the FAFSA form,” the site reads.
‘Conflicting messages’
Despite that guidance from the Department of Education, students and families may be looking at deadlines from their schools, states or other scholarship providers that ask them to submit the form as early as February 1, Steinkamp said.
“A lot of students and families are getting conflicting messages,” she said. “There’s the prospect or the possibility of a lot of tension and frustration.”
The glitches could also have broader implications beyond the coming weeks. Billions in grants regularly go unclaimed because students don’t apply for financial aid. For example, in 2022, high school seniors left nearly $3.6 billion in Pell grant dollars on the table because they didn’t fill out the FAFSA, according to an analysis by the National College Attainment Network.
The challenges filling out this year’s form, “might deter some students from completing FAFSA because it’s just taking so long to do,” Fichamba said. “There’s already lots of barriers to completion.”
Don’t panic, experts say
For now, experts are advising students and families not to panic. The Department of Education won’t be turning the information gleaned from the initial forms over to colleges and states until late January.
“In terms of applicants who might be panicking a little bit this week, we absolutely understand the frustration,” McCarthy said. Still, families shouldn’t worry if they can’t submit the form this week, she said.
“Schools won’t be getting any of these processed FAFSA forms until later this month anyway,” she added. Forms submitted “next week or even the week after that — all of those processed FAFSAs will be arriving at the institutions at the same time,” she said.
Steinkamp is continuing to advise students and families to fill out the form in time to meet priority scholarship deadlines. But she’s also telling them not to worry if they can’t fill the form out successfully this week.
“We are encouraging students and families to get in and do it as soon as they are able,” she said. “We are having to temper that message with a little bit of patience.”
Some colleges are considering changing their priority financial aid deadlines to account for delays, McCarthy said. Typically, all students who submit their form before this deadline will receive the same consideration for financial aid. Still, if schools extend the deadline for students to submit their information, there will be less time for colleges to evaluate the information and prepare their financial-aid offers. In such a situation, students might end up having less time to review the offers.
Having all the applicable information as soon as possible is key for students making decisions about where they plan to attend school, said Fichamba. Without it, they don’t know how much it will actually cost for them to enroll in a given college.
Usually by this time of year, Fichamba is providing individualized guidance to students about any outstanding application materials, or counseling them on making a decision. But now, she’ll also need to be providing more generalized advice about how to apply for financial aid.
“What I’m telling them is just to not worry about it, that we’re here to help them,” she said. Fichamba said she’s trying to absorb the stress of the experience herself “and not give them the stress.”
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