Fafsa: US student aid woes slow admissions cycle

Many US colleges and universities are shifting their admissions timelines for the coming academic year while the federal government fixes an overhaul of its student aid systems that was meant to help low-income students but could now end up deterring them.

Selective institutions typically set a 1 May deadline for accepted first-year students to say whether they will enrol in the coming academic year. Because of the troubles, the major US higher education associations are suggesting, and many institutions are agreeing, to push that requirement back at least a month.

“We all want students and families to have the time they need to consider their financial options before making enrolment decisions,” the groups, led by the American Council on Education, said in a joint appeal to their members.

The plea derives from major changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, the government’s online system for collecting and processing information about student and family income and wealth. The government has cut more than half of the 100-plus questions from the form and made the assistance formulas more generous. That appears to have helped and encouraged more people to participate, Biden administration officials said. “Students, parents and families continue to share with us how easy and fast it is to complete and submit,” the education department’s chief of federal student aid, Richard Cordray, said in an update this past week.

But the process of getting that information to institutions, the department said, had been slowed by technical difficulties with the form’s redesign and by the changes in aid formulas. That meant the delivery to the campuses of Fafsa records, which institutions need to set aid offers, wasn’t likely until early March, well behind the expected target of late January, department officials said.

Compensating by pushing back the traditional May deadline for students to accept their admissions was possible, but could have months of ripple effects, said Jon Boeckenstedt, vice-provost for enrolment management at Oregon State University. That included the rhythm and timing for adding students off waitlists, completing their registrations, holding new-student orientation sessions, and finishing contracts and assignments for housing, Mr Boeckenstedt said.

And while the May deadline has become traditional, colleges and universities cannot overtly act in concert to change it because of federal antitrust law. For Oregon State and others making the shift, Mr Boeckenstedt said, there was a risk that Fafsa information would arrive before the early-March estimate, costing them valuable time in the competition for students.

But if the federal estimate of early March did hold, it would be “virtually impossible for many students to meet the 1 May deadline and, given the stress, we thought it was best to do so quickly, rather than to deal with hundreds of extension requests on 30 April”, he said. “We think this is the right thing to do for parents and students.”

About 18 million students complete the Fafsa process each year, with lower-income applicants known to be disproportionately vulnerable when difficulties and uncertainties arise. The formula change – replacing the previous measure of expected family contribution with an inflation-adjusted index – has been estimated to bring students an extra $1.8 billion (£1.4 billion) in aid. That includes raising by 1.5 million, to 5.2 million, the number of students receiving the maximum Pell Grant, currently $7,395.

Problems related to aid overhaul appeared right from the start. The Fafsa form wasn’t available until early January, about three months late. By the start of February, only about three million forms had been submitted.

While the Biden administration has been seeing political advantage in student aid, repeatedly promoting its efforts to make college more affordable, Republicans have been eyeing benefit in the Fafsa situation, asking the main federal audit agency, the Government Accountability Office, to write a report on what has gone wrong.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com