The (DOE) has launched a new earnings indicator for students as part of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSAÂŽ) process, according to a .

Using existing federal data, the indicator provides students and their families with information about a school’s post-graduation earnings, says the release.

Of 162 North Carolina institutions in the database, 27 are flagged as having “lower earnings” and 13 do not have available data. Most of the flagged institutions are trade schools, but a few private colleges and one community college make the list.

Once a student completes the FAFSA process, the submission summary will now present key earnings data for each institution they have expressed interest in attending. If the institution’s average earnings are below those of the average high school graduate, the form will generate a “lower earnings” disclosure, says the release.

A spreadsheet for the new earnings indicator is now posted on the , and the department will update the indicator as more recent earnings data become available on the , a tool managed by DOE that provides data to help students compare colleges. The from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and IPEDS. Currently, some of the data relied on for the indicator is more than five years old.

You can download the spreadsheet , by clicking on the hyperlinked “Earnings Data.” To isolate data for North Carolina, in column F, deselect “All,” and then select “NC.” You should end up with a list of 162 institutions. In column K on the far right, you can see whether the department has flagged an institution as “lower earnings” for students. Use the column drop down, deselect “All,” and then select “Yes” to see which institutions are flagged. Additional information about the methodology is included on the spreadsheet in the definitions tab.

Flagged

1. Leons Beauty School Inc
2. Louisburg College
3. Miller-Motte College-Wilmington
4. Mitchells Academy
5. College of Wilmington
6. Pamlico Community College
7. Paul Mitchell the School-Fayetteville
8. Winston Salem Barber School
9. Pinnacle Institute of Cosmetology
10. Gwinnett College
11. Paul Mitchell the School-Charlotte
12. Charlotte Christian College and Theological Seminary
13. Empire Beauty School-Concord
14. Aveda Institute-Chapel Hill
15. Center for Massage
16. Miller-Motte College-Raleigh
17. Health And Style Institute
18. Miller-Motte College-Fayetteville
19. Empire Beauty School-Charlotte
20. Empire Beauty School-Winston-Salem
21. Empire Beauty School-Pineville
22. Carolina College of Hair Design Inc
23. Miller-Motte College-Jacksonville
24. Paul Mitchell the School-Raleigh
25. Empire Beauty School-West Greensboro
26. Beyond Measure Barbering Institute
27. Elevate Salon Institute

Data not available

1. Heritage Bible College
2. Carolina Christian College
3. Southeastern Free Will Baptist Bible College
4. Hood Theological Seminary
5. Daoist Traditions College of Chinese Medical Arts
6. Carolina College of Biblical Studies
7. Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine
8. Shepherds Theological Seminary
9. Manna University
10. Alexander Paul Institute of Hair Design
11. Bull City Durham Beauty and Barber College
12. No Grease Barber School
13. One Stop Academy

“More than half of all Americans now say a college degree is not worth the price, and total outstanding student loan debt is approaching $1.7 trillion. Families deserve a clearer picture of how postsecondary education connects to real-world earnings, and this new indicator will provide that transparency,” said Secretary of Education .

Nicholas Kent, under secretary of the department, published this , “Introducing the New Earnings Indicator on the FAFSA® Form,” covering why transparency matters, how the indicators works, and how to use the data to strengthen decision-making.

“This feature reflects our ongoing commitment to providing students and families with the information they need to plan confidently and pursue their desired future,” writes Kent.

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The U.S. Department of Education announced yesterday in a that the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) will open for a limited set of students and institutions on Oct. 1, and then the department will make the application available to all students on or before Dec. 1.

The department continues to try and ensure students have access to the maximum federal financial aid possible to reach their education goals, according to the release, and leaders are promising both a better product and smoother process.

The “Better FAFSA” launched earlier this year amid multiple glitches and delays, causing enormous stress for students and families who need help paying for college.

In North Carolina, help for the 2024-25 school year is still available for incoming freshmen, current college students, and adult learners via phone call, email, or in-person. We need you to spread the word as time is running out for college-bound students to complete the FAFSA, with the Aug. 15 priority date looming for those who may qualify for the state’s .

What we know about the 2025-26 FAFSA

According to the , on Oct. 1, the department will invite volunteers to participate in the testing period, and over time will make the form available to an increasing number of participants, starting with hundreds and expanding to tens of thousands of applicants. This process will allow the department to test and resolve issues before making the form available to all students and contributors by Dec. 1.

In the coming weeks, the department will release more information about how this testing period will work.

“Following a challenging 2024-25 FAFSA cycle, the Department listened carefully to the input of students, families, and higher education institutions, made substantial changes to leadership and operations at Federal Student Aid, and is taking a new approach this year that will significantly improve the FAFSA experience,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “Thanks to the partnership of our stakeholders, we’ve developed a better implementation process for 2025-26. I look forward to continuing to work with our partners to ensure this school year’s FAFSA implementation better serves our nation’s students.”

“We’ve heard from students, families, higher education professionals and other stakeholders loud and clear: They want a better, simpler FAFSA process, and they want to know when they can reliably expect it,” said FAFSA Executive Advisor Jeremy Singer. “In close collaboration with partners, Federal Student Aid is confident we will deliver not only a better product, but also a smoother process than last year. One that makes higher education more accessible and within reach for more Americans.”

The department hopes that regular updates during the testing period will boost confidence among students and families, institutions, state agencies, and other partners and stakeholders.

A new, formal request for feedback will be released next week by the department, and it intends to publish a new roadmap with additional tools for students and families, counselors, institutions, and other partners planning for a successful 2025-26 FAFSA season.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Lea esta historia en 

Fewer California high school seniors are completing federal financial aid applications than in past years, which some analysts say is a sign that students may fear the Trump administration will use their sensitive data for immigration enforcement.

The number of seniors completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has dropped by about 48,000 students, or 25%, as of last week, compared to this point last year. In both years, the California deadline for state financial aid — such as waivers to fully cover tuition at public universities plus other awards — is early March.

Also down dramatically is the share of students applying who have at least one parent who’s undocumented: That number has plunged 44% so far this year compared to this point last year — from about 30,000 students then to 17,000 now.

The  from the California Student Aid Commission, the state agency that handles financial aid. This morning the commission  with high school counselors regarding the implications of this decline and how to encourage more students to apply for aid. 

The Trump administration has not announced plans to use application information to target people for deportation.

“This is very alarming,” said Daisy Gonzales, executive director of the commission, in an interview about the application declines. “It’s a crisis in the sense that we have a perfect storm.” The White House’s , the fires in Southern California that displaced thousands of families and  plus students’  are all forces that Gonzales says may be behind the drop. 

If the trend of fewer applications holds, she fears that “we’re losing another generation of students who should be enrolling, who should be succeeding.”

The commission has extended the deadline for state aid  for students in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where much of the destructive winter fires occurred.  

California and FAFSA issues aren’t new

College aid experts warned last fall that families with undocumented members living in the U.S. were questioning the safety of the data. Leading associations of college advisors told students to  to protect their loved ones. While current law limits student and family information entered in the application for only financial aid purposes, legal experts told CalMatters under a presidency like Donald Trump’s. Some students with undocumented parents are specifically suspicious of a line in the application for parents asking them if  and a prompt to complete an identity verification form.

Gonzales has attended financial aid fairs the commission sponsors and heard from families about their FAFSA fears. “The number one question that they would ask me is, ‘Is it safe for me to apply, and what are my options?’” she said.

While the FAFSA is a federal application, California has its own state application that the student aid commission stresses is not shared with federal agencies. It’s called the , known as CADAA. Legal experts told CalMatters that federal agencies would have to  to access those state records.

The CADAA gives students access to state tuition waivers and several thousand dollars in other grants, but FAFSA is the only way for students to also receive federal student loans and the Pell grant, which can .

Originally meant for undocumented students, the state application last year was expanded to permit students with a parent who wasn’t a citizen to apply for state aid. The student aid commission took that step because of massive technological issues with the. But a senior staffer at the student aid commission told California lawmakers last year that the state application may need to take a larger role in handling student financial aid if the federal immigration climate changes — .

Two new state bills may help, Gonzales and other commission officials said. One would . Another would . Both bills are in their early stages, though the extension legislation could move quickly: Lawmakers last March  to address that year’s tech-related federal application mishaps.

“We have examples of families who actually have chosen not to submit the FAFSA application, and have opted instead for the CADAA,” said Marcos Montes, policy director for Southern California College Attainment Network, a coalition of nonprofits that helps students apply for college and financial aid. He said that’s what counselors in the network told him who specifically work with families living in public housing.

Montes said most mixed-status families he’s encountered who are foregoing FAFSA are those applying for financial aid for the first time. They’re less familiar with the process and are more hesitant to share information with the federal government, especially if they’ve submitted few, if any, personal records to federal authorities.

“They do realize that they’re leaving financial aid money on the table,” he said.

Federal role unclear, loss of money could be steep

There are many unknowns about Trump’s plans for student financial aid data, but Montes listed several new developments that he and his college access colleagues find concerning. One is billionaire Elon Musk’s group, called Department of Government Efficiency, that reportedly gained access to student loan records. Last week the undergraduate student association of the University of California  to halt Musk’s group’s access to student financial aid files. In response, the U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday said it would temporarily block Musk’s group from accessing those files, . That deal will last until at least Feb. 17.

Another worry is that the federal Department of Homeland Security, which includes immigration enforcement agencies, has asked officials at the Internal Revenue Service for help removing individuals who are in the country illegally,  It’s another indication of how immigration enforcement is pairing with outside agencies, Montes said.

For students who’ve already applied for federal financial aid in past years or whose parents have submitted tax returns, the federal government already has their information. That’s what the University of California is explaining to students.

“If your family has submitted this information in the past, it may continue to be accessible to those same government agencies,” the university . “Submission of a FAFSA, in this case, may not increase the amount of information about your family that is already accessible to the federal government. However, if your family has not had any data exchanged in these or other spaces, then submission of a FAFSA may present new information on the status of your family.”

A UC advisory group in December calculated that if every student with undocumented family members opted out of federal aid by only completing the state application, $85 million in grants .

“The University of California does not have the resources to backfill for $85 million in missing federal Pell Grants, much less any lost access to federal student loans or work-study,” wrote Stett Holbrook, a UC spokesperson, in a statement to CalMatters. 

Six individuals joined the suit, filed by the nation’s second-largest teacher’s union, alongside a coalition of labor unions representing over 2 million workers. Those impacted include teachers, who relied on federal student loans to pay for their college tuition, and high school students, who recently filed their federal financial aid forms with the department.

“When I filled out the FAFSA, I gave my Social Security number and my parent’s income information as well as their investment information,” Maryland high school student Sara Porcari said at an AFT Wednesday. “I thought that information would be private and secure. Now I’m not sure what’s happening.”

“I’m only 17 years old,” she continued, “and I don’t know who has access to my personal information or how this data breach will affect my future in college and in general.”

AFT President Randi Weingarten questioned why Musk, a billionaire given free rein by the president to remake the federal government, and DOGE want access to that information, expressing doubts about their stated purpose of improving government efficiency. 

 An AFT press release Tuesday called for “Elon Musk and his minions to be immediately evicted from the U.S. Department of Education,” alleging they were feeding the data from millions of people’s private student loan accounts “into artificial intelligence in one of the biggest data hacks in U.S. history.”

Ernesh Stewart, a Washington, D.C., school counselor and mom, echoed those concerns Wednesday, “Why do you need to access my daughter’s scholarship information? Why do you even need my home address? I can’t help but wonder if there is a hidden agenda. If one of the country’s wealthiest men, who also happens to be deeply invested in AI, has access to all this information, whatever it is, I feel like it’s a gross violation of privacy.”

The Education Department, which oversees the private information of 43 million student borrowers who hold $1.6 trillion in student debt, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A DOGE representative did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Weingarten and other panelists at the conference expressed their hope that President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, would join them in condemning this “data breach,” during her Thursday confirmation hearing.

“I would hope that what she would do is protect students and protect families from this kind of financial intrusion and invasion and … say to the millions of people that have been affected the steps she’s taking to stop it,” Weingarten said.

While the lawsuit contends government agencies have valid purposes for maintaining these record systems, the makes clear they can only provide access to them in very specific situations. Here, though, the filing argues, DOGE representatives have accessed the data to shut down payments “and in the case of the Education Department, the agency itself.”

After gaining access to the systems last week, Musk, who is not an elected official, turned to X, the social media platform he owns, to boast that the Department of Education no longer exists. 

What is this “Department of Education” you keep talking about?

I just checked and it doesn’t exist.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

In another DOGE-led effort, the Trump administration moved Monday to gut the Institute of Education Sciences, temporarily disabling an essential source of data on a host of basic information, ranging from high school graduation rates to school safety. 

DOGE was created by a Trump executive order in January. Supporters argue Musk is working to cut federal bloat and streamline systems. But critics say Musk, whose companies, including SpaceX, receive billions in government contracts, lacks transparency and has immense conflicts of interest.  

The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Maryland, also alleges that the U.S. Department of Education, along with the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Treasury, has exposed millions of Americans to “the risk of identity theft, harassment, intimidation, and embarrassment” by improperly disclosing their sensitive records to DOGE employees who lack appropriate security clearances. The staff includes a 19-year-old who has previously leaked proprietary information, according to the suit.

WIRED magazine broke the story earlier this month that at the center of DOGE’s effort to take over various federal departments and agencies are six male engineers, with ties to Musk.

In particular, plaintiffs claim that the Department of Education and its acting head, Denise Carter, have released data from the National Student Loan Data System, a financial aid-related database housed within the Education Department that contains information on almost 34 million borrowers and their families. It includes a plethora of sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, bank records, home addresses and immigration status. 

About 20 people with DOGE have begun working inside the education department, looking to cut According to reporting from some of these representatives have fed sensitive and personally identifiable data from across the department into artificial intelligence software to look into the agency’s programs and spending.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to end the data disclosure immediately by restoring Privacy Act protections and are demanding that any data currently in DOGE’s possession be deleted and destroyed. The act, put in place in the wake of the Watergate scandal, regulates the circumstances in which agency records about individuals can be shared; disclosing anything beyond this is illegal. 

On Tuesday, a federal judge in a against the Education Department blocked Musk’s team from accessing several systems that store sensitive data including student loans, but only temporarily. In a hearing for that case, Musk said he did not see how DOGE’s access to student loan data caused harm.

While it has previously been reported that DOGE representatives are political appointees, it now appears that some have received official government credentials, including email addresses, at multiple agencies, including at the Department of Education, leading to confusion about who actually employs them.

The challenges with last year’s launch have been well-documented. In fact, I took a six-month leave from my post as president of the College Board to join the U.S. Department of Education in fixing the FAFSA. After months of hard work, we are confident this year will be much better. We arrived at this point by adhering to a few best practices for technology development, whether for the government or the private sector.

The development and launch of a new FAFSA for the 2024-25 admissions cycle faced unique challenges. In today’s world, policy complexity produces software complexity. In turn, software complexity produces increased expenses, delays, and errors. 

In December 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act – well-intended, bipartisan legislation that aimed to shorten the form, increase accuracy by importing tax data from the Internal Revenue Service, and, ultimately, expand eligibility for Pell Grants.

This Act required brand-new software composed of multiple components that are themselves integrated to a dozen other systems, many housed in other agencies. While the Department of Education is full of devoted public servants with tremendous knowledge about financial aid and a passion for helping people go to college, they had limited experience building modern, complex software applications. In addition, due to the nature of government contracting, the Department ended up working with four separate vendors to build the new FAFSA. 

Given all of these challenges, the problems encountered during the 2024-25 launch should not have been a surprise. But that is little comfort to students and families who had a difficult experience last year.

So why is this year better? In preparing for the 2025-26 launch, our work was guided by five key principles, all of which can be applied to any government endeavor:

1. Focus on what is most important. A common mistake in software is trying to do too much. Failing to make tough choices leads to missed deadlines, poor code quality and user frustration. We focused on two things: 1) fixing any bugs that prevented students from submitting the form; and 2) delivering a stable application on a defined timeline for students, families, and institutions of higher education. This required us to make tough choices, such as deferring some new features, which allowed us to launch well ahead of last year’s schedule.
2. Use data to identify critical user issues. Data is a powerful tool to zero in on challenges that affect large numbers of users. For example, a question in the 2024-25 FAFSA about a “direct unsubsidized loan” was originally worded in a way that unintentionally caused too many students – over 5% – to forgo Pell Grants and subsidized federal loans. After seeing the data and working with users, that question was redesigned, and the number of students misinterpreting it declined precipitously.
3. Invest heavily in testing. Comprehensive testing is the most important aspect of any complex software project. We developed multiple new testing tools and methodologies, marrying data science and automated testing, that enabled us to verify the accuracy of the data we send to colleges, universities, and state agencies. We collaborated with the IRS to double-check the tax data that we receive. Most importantly, we conducted seven weeks of beta testing with more than 70 organizations – college access nonprofits, high schools and school districts, colleges and universities – before expanding testing to all interested students earlier this week. Over 67,000 students submitted real FAFSA forms during this testing period, and we traveled to many universities to sit with financial aid professionals as they independently verified the data we sent them.
4. Embrace transparency. Because of the uncertainties and delays surrounding the 2024-25 FAFSA, key external stakeholders felt unprepared to support students. A chorus of advisors from the wider community told us that we needed to be more open about the work underway this year, both strides and setbacks, in order to build back this trust. We invested time and effort in building more channels and frequency for communication, including a new website at where we regularly updated statistics, provided updates on bug fixes, and shared stories from the field.
5. Harness the power of the broader community. The success of the FAFSA depends not just on the government but also on a large ecosystem of organizations that play a vital role in supporting students and families. In part because of the breakdown of trust, the community was often out of sync and at times at-odds. By intentionally engaging these stakeholders, we were able to strengthen the partnerships needed to deliver a successful launch for families, including a critical testing period.

Ahead of the launch in November, we knew that the large majority of students can complete the FAFSA quickly: Over 90 percent of this year’s applicants reported that they completed it in a “reasonable amount of time.” Ultimately, for many people, the promise of FAFSA simplification – a simpler form that provides more aid – has been or will be realized.

There is more work to be done in the years ahead. There will be families who may struggle with the FAFSA; there are usability issues we have not had time to fix yet. For example, the ability for a student to invite their parent to the form needs to be simplified. The team is aware of these problems and will now turn its attention to making further improvements that will benefit everyone, especially those from underrepresented communities.

Building good software is hard; building good software under the unique constraints of the federal government is harder. But delivering a simpler FAFSA that serves students, families and institutions is a strong first step – and continuing to apply these lessons will build on that success.

Incoming president Donald Trump has vowed to .

For students who are eyeing college, his presidency represents a potentially brutal Sophie’s Choice if they have undocumented parents: Risk exposing them to a possible immigration dragnet by completing the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, or leave thousands of dollars in cash for school on the table. 

While researchers and advocates have yet to hear anything concrete from Trump representatives about using financial aid data to target undocumented residents, they know families are afraid.

“Front line staff that work directly with students are reporting that students and parents are asking them if the FAFSA is safe” given Trump’s campaign promises of mass deportation, said Marcos Montes, policy director for Southern California College Attainment Network, a coalition of nonprofits that help students apply for college admission and financial aid.

The National College Attainment Network said those fears are justified. It “cannot assure mixed-status students and families that data submitted to the US Department of Education, as part of the FAFSA process, will continue to be protected,” a read late last month.

That fear is exacerbated by  that the only way to deport undocumented parents whose children are citizens is to have the whole family leave. “I don’t want to be breaking up families,” Trump said. “So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” How Trump can force out citizens, including those with parents not born in the U.S., is unclear; experts say .

An estimated 3.3 million Californians , including 1 in 5 children under 18, according to data from Equity Research Institute, a USC research group.

A California workaround

Experts say California students eligible for financial aid can minimize the possible harm to their undocumented parents. Unlike the FAFSA, the state aid application is not shared with federal agencies. That policy is  in place under California’s so-called “sanctuary” laws  the use of state resources to . Several legal experts told CalMatters the Trump administration would have to clear a high legal bar to gain access to those state records and that court cases have put restrictions on how wide a net immigration enforcement agencies can cast in their search for data. 

Because the deadline for state financial aid is in March — though there are plans to move it to April — and the federal deadline , Californians attending college here should complete the state application first, said Montes. Then they should wait to see if the Trump administration will break precedent and begin using the federal financial aid data for immigration enforcement purposes.

That strategy is also endorsed by Madeleine Villanueva, the interim higher education director at Immigrants Rising, a California-based advocacy and research group focused on undocumented residents. She stressed that there’s a bevy of analysts and immigrant rights advocates who’ll be watching for updates from the Trump administration.

“Unfortunately, we can’t say what’s going to happen federally,” she said. But the California state aid application, known as the California Dream Act Application, is an “extra layer of safety when it comes to applying for financial aid.”

The California Student Aid Commission, an agency with the sole goal of getting students more money, suggests students may need to forgo federal aid given the risks to their families. The agency, which runs the state’s financial aid programs,  that completing just the state aid application is a “viable option” for students in mixed-status homes who have “fears of adverse action by federal immigration enforcement.”

However, taking a wait-and-see approach with federal aid means California campuses won’t have a full picture of how much aid a student is likely to get when they send out financial aid estimates to admitted students in the spring. The University of California’s central office worries that students may not complete the FAFSA and lose out on aid. Both UC and the California State University indicated to CalMatters they’ll process either form students submit and will work with students who file their federal applications later.

About , which waives tuition at the public universities and partially at private colleges. That grant plus the state’s  can add up to more than $17,000 in aid in one year. The state aid application ensures students fearful of the federal application can still receive the state support for which they’re eligible.

The University of California’s undergraduate student government is also on edge about FAFSA. The lack of a firm firewall “could put certain students at risk,” said Saanvi Arora, external vice president for UC Berkeley’s student government and a board member for the systemwide student government.

Understanding the FAFSA risk

Students who are  are eligible for up to $7,400 in Pell grants and access to federal loans that come with repayment protections that are often stronger than what the private sector offers. To receive this aid, students who live with their parents need them to fill out portions of the federal aid application. More recently,  have been asked to indicate they lack one and then must answer a set of questions about their identity.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees the country’s immigration enforcement, have a regularly renewed . Because students need to be citizens or permanent residents to get financial aid, a signed agreement between the two departments states that students’ information they submit for FAFSA will be matched against an . It’s one that hundreds of state, local and federal agencies use to determine whether an individual is eligible for federal benefits. Neither SAVE nor the agency that operates it, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, are used for immigration enforcement purposes. 

Conceptually, it’s not hard to use that federal financial aid data for enforcement purposes, according to experts who spoke with CalMatters. However, doing so would be a major break from current protocol. 

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education “has not provided and will not provide information gathered through FAFSA to any federal immigration-related agency for law enforcement activities,” wrote in an email James Kvaal, who holds the number two spot at the U.S. Department of Education and is the top higher education officer in the federal government. However, he wrote, “students and their families should make the decisions that are right for them.”

That does not “sound like a robust encouragement to go ahead and fill out the FAFSA,” said Bob Shireman, who was a senior higher education official in the education department during the Obama administration.

The agreement between the departments “is not much of a firewall, it is more like a picket fence,” Shireman said in an interview. The agreement can be changed in a matter of months, he said, “so if the next administration wants to use education department records to identify people who may have an immigration status that could subject them to deportation, I don’t see anything preventing that from happening.”

Federal laws limit the data sharing that can occur between the U.S. Department of Education and law enforcement agencies, said Shelveen Ratnam, a spokesperson for the California Student Aid Commission. Ratnam said that current law “strictly prohibits” agencies in possession of personally identifiable information, like parental data, from releasing that information, with few exceptions. Some other laws and policies also apply and the gist is that an agency can only use the personal information of others in ways that support the mission of that federal agency.

But if the U.S. Department of Education gets subpoenaed for information, the department’s “responses and likelihood of challenging the demand for information are unknown,” according to Ratnam.

Even analysts who say using parental FAFSA information is an inefficient way to find possible undocumented parents urge caution. They say it’s not out of the question that a Trump administration could try to make use of that data for immigration enforcement purposes.

While “it’s sort of methodologically flawed as a way to identify individuals,” said Corinne Kentor, an , “that doesn’t mean that it won’t be attempted. But I think it is probably harder and more work than other avenues.”

California Dream Act Application is safer

The California Dream Act Application has more protections than the federal application. Though originally designed to allow undocumented students who are California residents to apply for state college benefits, the application in 2024 was modified to permit any student who ran into problems with the federal application to at least apply for state grants. The change stemmed from colossal data issues with the federal application this year that  from completing the FAFSA.

According to a , “the government can’t enforce a subpoena that is just ‘fishing’ for data about undocumented people,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a scholar on immigration law at UCLA. That’s in contrast to “trying to gather information on a particular individual that the government has reason to suspect is here in violation of the immigration laws.”

Arulanantham also said that a federal agency asking California’s financial aid agency to search databases for undocumented students could run afoul of the 10th Amendment.

Finally, the state’s financial aid agency could challenge a judicial order or subpoena that seeks student records on the grounds that it’s not specific enough and violates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, Ratnam said. 

Now what does all this mean for students with undocumented parents who already submitted FAFSA information last year? Their information is already in government systems. Should they continue to file their FAFSA? Experts had few answers. They said that’s a decision that only families can decide together given the varying protections available.

Arora, the UC student government member, is sympathetic to those households. It’s “absolutely a tough question,” she said. That’s one reason she wants UC officials to bolster existing immigration legal aid services, such as bringing in more lawyers. 

It’s one answer she has to her own question: “How do we mitigate retribution that’s likely to happen against those students?”

This was originally published on .

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) officially released the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on Nov. 21, 10 days before its Dec. 1 goal and three days after opening the form to all students and families as part of .

The online FAFSA form is available to all students and families at , and the paper form is also now available for students to submit.

“I’m pleased to announce that after four successful rounds of beta testing, the 2025–26 FAFSA form is now available to all students and families,”  U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “After months of hard work and lots of feedback from students, schools, and other stakeholders, we can say with confidence that FAFSA is working and will serve as the gateway to college access and affordability to millions of students.”

The beta testing for the 2025-26 FAFSA followed the rocky launch of the “Better FAFSA” , which saw multiple glitches and delays and caused stress for students and families seeking help paying for college.

While many students experienced delays, students from mixed-status families, or those whose parents don’t have a social security number, were . DOE officials previously told members of the press that “many” mixed-status students successfully submitted their applications during Beta 1, which started Oct. 1.

Beta 2 testing started on Oct. 15, and Beta 3 started in early November. The final stage of testing, Beta 4, started on Nov. 13, expanding the testing to thousands of additional students recruited by various community and education organizations. On Nov. 18, the DOE entered its final stage of beta testing, “Expanded Beta 4,” which allowed all students to submit forms.

According to , more than 167,000 students successfully submitted their 2025-26 FAFSA during the beta testing period. The Department has sent records to more than 5,200 schools across the U.S., the release said.

“Already, over 650,000 more applicants are eligible for Pell Grants, and more students are receiving Pell Grants, this school year compared to last year,” Cardona said. “We stand ready to help millions more students complete the FAFSA and get the financial aid they need to pursue their dreams of a college education.”

The College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC) is encouraging students and families to fill out the FAFSA as soon as possible.

“Last year the FAFSA was revamped into a new form that delayed the process, and some families experienced issues submitting it,” CFNC said in a press release. “But so far this year the application process has been running smoothly, with no critical errors reported so far, so there is no need to wait to get started.”

The 2025–26 FAFSA form is available now for the award year that runs from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. Here’s what you need to know about the FAFSA and how to apply.

How to apply

First, you’ll need to .

Your contributors will also need to create their own accounts. Your contributors are anyone required to provide information on your FAFSA form, such as your parents or your spouse.

If you are a student, you will be required to enter your Social Security number (SSN) to create a StudentAid.gov account unless you’re a citizen of the  (the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau).

If your contributors do not have a SSN, they can still create an account to complete their section of your FAFSA form. However, if your contributors do have a SSN, you are required to provide the number when inviting them to contribute to your FAFSA form.

Next, gather the documents needed to apply. The FAFSA asks for information about you (your name, date of birth, address, etc.) and your financial situation. Here are some examples of the information you might need:

• Your parents’ SSNs if they have SSNs and you’re a 
• Tax returns
• Records of child support received
• Current balances of cash, savings, and checking accounts
• Net worth of investments, businesses, and farms

The financial data determines a family’s expected out-of-pocket college payments. If those returns don’t reflect your current financial situation, you can file an appeal for a  with the school you plan to attend.

File your FAFSA form online at , by completing a  and mailing it, or by requesting a print-out of the FAFSA PDF at 1-800-433-3243 and mailing it. Check out this resource for information on .

If you need help filling out the FAFSA, you can speak with someone at the DOE’s contact center at 1-800-433-3243 or by live chat . The Department is also offering expanded FAFSA-only hours at the center Nov. 22 through March 2.

Students and families can reach agents at the contact center in English or in Spanish. Interpretation services in additional languages can be accessed .

Why the FAFSA matters

According to the CFNC, completing the FAFSA is “an important step toward paying for college.”

Completing a FAFSA makes you eligible for federal aid, , and previous Covid-19 relief. Many North Carolina colleges and universities also use the form to divvy up state aid.

Affordability is one of the main barriers to postsecondary attainment. The FAFSA helps many students access money for college they otherwise couldn’t. In North Carolina, , as of Sept. 27, 2024.

However, barriers to filling out the form exist for many students. , and first-generation prospective college students and their families also face barriers.

A lack of reliable internet access and language barriers can also be a challenge. Community colleges across the state have hosted FAFSA events to help provide in-person assistance filling out the forms.

“We are very fortunate to have our community colleges be an advocate for that,” Amy Denton, a regional representative at CFNC,

This year, CFNC is encouraging students and families to apply for the 2025-26 FAFSA early.

One reason is to maximize your financial aid opportunities. According to a CFNC release, some funding is allocated first-come, first-served, and some scholarships have early deadlines.

“So get all the aid you qualify for by submitting your FAFSA early,” the release says.

Applying early also means you will receive your financial aid package award letters sooner.

“Knowing how much federal, state and college-based aid you’re awarded can help you decide which options fit your budget,” CFNC said.

In North Carolina, applying for the FAFSA also automatically enrolls you for the . That scholarship covers tuition and fees at any North Carolina community college for students from families making $80,000 a year or less. If interested in a university, students can get a minimum of $5,000 towards tuition and fees at any of the 16 UNC system schools.

What to do if you don’t or can’t complete it

Most individual colleges have their own scholarship and aid dashboards.

While many need-based funds require a FAFSA, some allow other documentation of your financial situation. Many scholarships don’t require any financial documentation.

If you’re not a U.S. citizen, you might not . In this case, you can use your Alien Registration number to apply. Non-citizen students can also seek aid at individual colleges with funds that don’t require the FAFSA, like these resources at  and .

You can learn more about other FAFSA barriers .

More resources

The Department recently released several new resources to assist students and families in completing and submitting the FAFSA form during the 2025–26 cycle:

• : A new resource that explains what families and partners need to know about creating a StudentAid.gov account.
• : Updated tips for preparing to fill out and submitting the FAFSA form. This resource is also linked to the StudentAid.gov Dashboard to promote easier access for students and their required contributor(s).
• : Provides an estimate of the 2025–26 Student Aid Index (SAI) and Federal Pell Grant eligibility calculation.
• : A new, stand-alone tool to help students and families determine who will need to provide contributor information on the 2025–26 FAFSA form prior to starting the application.
• : Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA form, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form.

Here are other resources:

• : Updated resources for school counselors, college access professionals, and mentors with information about the FAFSA process.
• : A list of known issues with the form updated in real-time as bugs are fixed in beta testing.
• FAFSA videos: Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form:

If you are a student reapplying for the FAFSA, your college’s counseling office is also a great resource.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Updated on Nov. 21 —The Department of Education announced that beta testing of the 2025-26 FAFSA form , 10 days before its Dec. 1, 2024 goal. The official form is now available to all students and families. Those interested in completing the online form can do so at . A paper form is also now available. 

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced on Thursday, Nov. 14 the launch of the final stage of testing (Beta 4) for the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — which is

As part of the final beta testing, the DOE will open the FAFSA to all students and families under what they are calling “Expanded Beta 4” before the end of November.

“During that time, the Department will continue to carefully monitor the FAFSA form, overall system performance, and support operations, such as our contact center, and adjust operations as needed,” a DOE release says. “This will allow the Department to test the FAFSA system with higher volumes of users, while giving students an opportunity to submit online 2025–26 FAFSA forms before Dec. 1.”

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Once the DOE determines the “FAFSA system is operating smoothly with high volumes of users” during Expanded Beta 4, the 2025-26 FAFSA form will officially be released.

“Allowing more students to access the FAFSA form is the final state of beta testing as we prepare to officially launch the form no later than Dec. 1,” DOE Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said.

Since testing started on Oct. 1, more than 14,000 students have successfully submitted their 2025-26 FAFSA forms, according to the DOE release. The forms of those students have been processed, and the DOE has sent more than 81,000 records to more than 1,850 schools across 43 states.

“The Department has not found any critical bugs during the beta testing period, and the FAFSA system is working end-to-end,” the release says. “In addition, the Department has focused on addressing issues and improving the user experience in the application. Students and families are benefiting from these enhancements, leading to a satisfaction rating for beta participants of 95%.”

The beta testing for the 2025-26 FAFSA follows the rocky launch of the “Better FAFSA” , which saw multiple glitches and delays and caused stress for students and families seeking help paying for college.

While many students experienced delays, students from mixed-status families, or those whose parents don’t have a social security number, were . DOE officials previously told members of the press that “many” mixed-status students successfully submitted their applications during Beta 1, which started Oct. 1.

Beta 2 testing started on Oct. 15, and Beta 3 started in early November. The final stage of testing, Beta 4, started on Wednesday, Nov. 13, expanding the testing to thousands of additional students recruited by various community and education organizations.

“We are in a radically different and better place than last cycle,” FAFSA Executive Advisor Jeremy Singer told reporters during a call on Thursday. “Our systems have been fully tested, and they are ready to go.”

Singer said the Department has successfully tested this year’s application with several different subgroups, including active duty military members, veterans, students with dependent children, students experiencing homelessness, and students from mixed-status families.

On Nov. 15, the DOE is visiting a Texas prison with a community organization to assist incarcerated students with filling out the paper form, Singer said.

“We’ve been determined to make sure that last year’s delays and errors were not repeated again this year,” Kvaal told reporters.

Bennett College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington are participating in Beta 3 and 4 testing stages.

In addition to the expanded beta testing, the Department has also “significantly staffed up” its call center, Singer said, adding more than 700 agents since last January. Once the FAFSA officially launches, the Department also plans to offer extended hours at night and on Saturdays.

“This new phase of expanded Beta 4 gives us an opportunity to comprehensively test the FAFSA application at an even larger scale than we have to date,” Singer said. “We understand that after last year, we are still in the process of rebuilding trust with families, with institutions, and it led us to take these extra precautions.”

You can read more about Beta results and testing 

FAFSA resources

The Department recently released several new resources to assist students and families in completing and submitting the FAFSA form during the 2025–26 cycle:

• : A new resource that explains what families and partners need to know about creating a StudentAid.gov account.
• : Updated tips for preparing to fill out and submitting the FAFSA form. This resource will also be linked from the StudentAid.gov Dashboard to promote easier access for students and their required contributor(s).
• : Provides an estimate of the 2025–26 Student Aid Index (SAI) and Federal Pell Grant eligibility calculation.
• : A new, stand-alone tool to help students and families determine who will need to provide contributor information on the 2025–26 FAFSA form prior to starting the application.
• : Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA form, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form.

Here are other resources:

• : Updated resources for school counselors, college access professionals, and mentors with information about the FAFSA process.
• : A list of known issues with the form updated in real-time as bugs are fixed in beta testing.
• FAFSA videos: Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form:

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

WASHINGTON — A measure to ensure the federal student aid form opens up annually by Oct. 1 passed the U.S. House Friday with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The  â€” which passed 381-1 — came after the U.S. Department of Education faced major backlash over the botched rollout of the 2024-25 , or FAFSA. California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren was the only lawmaker to vote against the bill. 

Though the form got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020, users faced multiple glitches and technical errors throughout the form’s soft launch in December and past its full debut in January, prompting processing delays and gaps in submissions.

The department has worked to correct these glitches and close that gap while also fixing major issues that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from completing the form.

Adding another complication, the  it would use a phased rollout of the 2025-26 form in an attempt to address any errors that might arise before it opens up to everyone — making the application fully available two months later than usual.

“Since Oct. 1, the Department has conducted three successful beta tests of the 2025–26 FAFSA form to ensure it is ready for all students and families on or before Dec. 1,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement shared Monday with States Newsroom, while noting that the department already began its fourth testing stage this past week.

“We have a fully functioning site and a form working end-to-end that has been successfully submitted by more than 10,000 students, with dozens of schools all over the country receiving the data for student aid packages,” he said.

The department is on track to launch the 2026-27 FAFSA on Oct. 1, 2025, with “a fully functioning system,” according to Kvaal. 

Codified deadline

Though the department legally has until Jan. 1 to roll out the form, it typically launches Oct. 1.

U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin, an Indiana Republican and member of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in July  to standardize that deadline.

“I’m especially frustrated considering the Department of Education has had three years to simplify the FAFSA as Congress has dictated,” Houchin said during floor debate Friday.

She also  from the Government Accountability Office, including that nearly three-quarters of all calls to the call center went unanswered in the first five months of the 2024-25 rollout.

“We want this program to work — we want to make sure that children and families that want to send their kids to college have the availability to do that and that the FAFSA is available and workable,” she added.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House education panel, echoed his support during the floor debate, saying the measure will “help ensure that even more students have the information they need in a timelier manner to access Pell Grants and other vital student aid.”

Scott initially opposed the effort when the committee took it up in July out of concerns that the implementation deadline could force the department to roll out an incomplete form on Oct. 1 of this year.

“However, because we’re now considering the bill after Oct. 1, the deadline will apply next year, 2025, and that gives the department ample time to make improvements and fix any lingering issues,” the Virginia Democrat said.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican,  in July.

The bill was referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, where Cassidy serves as ranking member. After Republicans won a Senate majority in the Nov. 5 elections,  to chair the panel next year. 

This originally appeared on .

In 2018, the Trump administration reorganizing the department out of existence. That effort failed, showing that even under a Republican administration, dissolving the Department of Education is difficult. But it’s not impossible.

A reform-minded, results-oriented executive could begin by rerouting many of the department’s functions to other agencies rather than abolishing it wholesale. I use years of personal experience in the Department of Education, leading both the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its parent Institute of Education Sciences (IES), to show how a conservative president could achieve some first steps — and why they’re needed.  

First, and most urgently, the department must answer for its recent FAFSA debacle, which has affected millions of students and their families. The Government Accountability Office has painstakingly documented the myriad failures in how the department managed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process this year. In testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, GAO official Melissa Emry-Arras no fewer than 40 technical problems with the FAFSA form at launch alone. These errors led to significant in the number of students — especially low-income ones — who applied for federal aid, reducing college enrollment across the country and eroding social mobility for struggling families. 

With its FAFSA failure, the department has proven it cannot effectively administer student aid programs. Its extensive student loan portfolio must be moved to the Treasury Department — and this should happen regardless of the Education Department’s eventual fate. At $1.7 trillion, the federal student aid program roughly equals a bank the size of Wells Fargo or Citibank, the third- and fourth-largest in the nation. Wells Fargo has over 226,000 to manage its portfolio, while the department has fewer than 4,400 spread across all its functions and fewer than 1,500 in the Office of Federal Student Aid. Managing the equivalent of a large bank clearly lies outside the capacity and skill set of the Education Department.  

Though not as urgent as shifting $1.7 trillion to Treasury — a Cabinet agency that deals with money — the research and evaluation activities of IES should be moved to the National Science Foundation. In bills like the CHIPS and Science Act, Congress has repeatedly closer cooperation between the foundation and the Department of Education, especially IES. 

There are several benefits to bringing IES under the foundation’s roof. IES would bring much-needed evaluation experience to NSF, ensuring taxpayer funds are spent on programs that work. Such assessments are at the core of IES’s mission, while the foundation’s education unit has not done much to study the effect of its investments on student outcomes.

Additionally, both agencies have launched in the past few years, mostly focused on a key emerging issue: how artificial intelligence can improve learning. Education research has benefited from the expertise of the foundation’s larger, more intellectually diverse sets of researchers. These include engineers, data scientists and other experts who can improve education but do not usually consider it as a research domain or IES as a potential source of support.

Having researchers work together in a unified organization would lead to closer collaboration and generate more creative innovations with greater positive impact. Moving IES into NSF would also allow the of a unit like DARPA, but for education research and development. This would lead to programs that embody the rapid turnaround and transformative vision essential to the future of education R&D.

A DARPA for education could support new partnerships with states, school districts, researchers and ed tech companies. It would certainly enable better research using AI, machine learning and cutting-edge data science methods. Already, there is considerable support for this type of program (see the , for example).

Moving IES to NSF would also give Congress the opportunity to evaluate other parts of IES’s portfolio, such as the , which have been on the chopping block repeatedly but persist at close to $60 million per year. There is far too much overlap between these and the Department of Education’s . Right now, by statute, there must be at least one comprehensive center for each of the lab program’s 10 regions across the United States. Not only do these programs overlap geographically, but it’s unclear how their missions differ. According to their , the labs, “have collaborated with school districts, state departments of education and other education stakeholders to help generate and apply evidence, with the goal of improving learner outcomes.” How does this differ from the mission of the centers, which themselves as providing “capacity-building services to state educational agencies (SEAs), regional educational agencies (REAs), local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools that improve educational outcomes”?

The labs and the centers appear to be much the same program, just duplicated, thanks to bureaucratic bloat and turf wars. Knowing who does what is challenging even for experts at navigating bureaucracy, let alone for educators or policymakers seeking advice. Either the comprehensive center program should be merged with the regional labs, or both should be terminated.

If they survive, moving them to NSF would allow closer coordination with the , a program that promotes regional partnerships among the private sector, academia and nonprofits in critical technology fields. Strong, effective education systems must be central to that effort — and combining the foundation’s regional innovative strategy with regional education efforts would help by creating a pipeline for STEM students into local high-tech industries.

Finally, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should move to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, creating the Bureau of Labor and Education Statistics. The current bureau has a long history of managing the collection and distribution of sensitive data and is committed to the timely release of information — which puts it in stark contrast to NCES. For example, despite legal requirements and the importance of school and school district finance information, NCES is several years behind in releasing those crucial data. 

Programs that are not moved to other federal agencies or shut down altogether should be rolled into formula-driven block grants. This would enhance the role of the states, which are constitutionally charged with providing education and know better than the federal government what their students need. Devolving the department’s powers would also reduce its onerous regulatory requirements, which stifle much-needed educational innovation. 

Government agencies . They can be — and are — terminated when their opponents win elections and gain power. Closing agencies is challenging, and nothing the size of even the small Department of Education has been shuttered so far. But political will and hard work can make it so. The right administration could give the nation a more efficient, dynamic and responsive school system — all things the Department of Education has been hard-pressed to do.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced on Tuesday, Oct. 15, the launch of the second stage of testing (Beta 2) for the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — which is

The announcement follows two weeks of the first round of testing (Beta 1), during which “the Department did not uncover any critical bugs,” according to a press release.

During Beta 1, which started Oct. 1, more than 650 students successfully submitted applications, the DOE said, and dozens of student corrections were successfully completed. Nearly 600 higher education institutions also received 6,266 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) generated by those applications.

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FAFSA Executive Advisor Jeremy Singer said the department’s original goal was to submit and process forms for 100 students during Beta 1.

“Instead, we had more than six times that number of students and we were able to see the forms move from submission to processing — and even corrections — without any major issues,” Singer said. “We learned a tremendous amount from being able to observe students, families, and community-based organizations interacting with the FAFSA form in real time, and we are on track for a full launch on or before Dec. 1.”

Beta 2 launched on Tuesday, DOE officials said during a press briefing call. This second round of testing includes 16 organizations that will work together to recruit thousands of students from diverse income, geographic, family, and educational backgrounds, the department said.

Beta 2 will also include returning students for the first time during the testing period. Ahead of the Dec. 1 launch for all students, DOE officials said there will also be a third and fourth round of testing. Beta 3 is expected to launch

The beta testing for the 2025-26 FAFSA follows the rocky launch of the “Better FAFSA” , which saw multiple glitches and delays and caused stress for students and families seeking help paying for college.

While many students experienced delays, students from mixed-status families, or those whose parents don’t have a social security number, were .

On Tuesday, DOE officials told members of the press that “many” mixed-status students successfully submitted their applications during Beta 1.

“Throughout the extensive Beta 1 testing, the Department encountered opportunities to improve the usability of the FAFSA form, which was expected given that the Department has prioritized the stability of the application,” the DOE press release said. “Improving usability will continue to be a focus of the Department following the full launch of the FAFSA form on or before Dec. 1.”

For Beta 1 testing, DOE staff attended 2025-26 FAFSA events from Oct. 1-3 in six cities across the country — Birmingham, Alabama; Santa Barbara, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Dallas, Texas; and Alexandria, Virginia.

The department expects more attendees from those events to continue submitting the FAFSA form, along with students being targeted during Beta 2.

Bennett College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington are participating in the upcoming testing stages.

“On behalf of the Department of Education, I want to offer a huge thank you to all of the students, family members, counselors, financial aid experts, and others participating in the testing process,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal. “Their efforts are helping us get the FAFSA ready for everyone.”

You can read more about Beta 1 results, along with upcoming testing,

FAFSA resources

• : Updated resources for school counselors, college access professionals, and mentors with information about the FAFSA process.
• : A list of known issues with the form updated in real-time as bugs are fixed in beta testing.
• FAFSA videos: Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form:

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education is launching the first testing period for its phased rollout of the 2025-26 form to apply for federal financial student aid on Tuesday, with more students set to partake in this beginning testing stage than initially expected.

The department  it would be using a staggered approach to launch the 2025-26  â€” or FAFSA — in order to address any issues that might arise before the form opens up to everyone by Dec. 1. The number of students able to complete the form will gradually increase throughout four separate testing stages, with the first one beginning Oct. 1.

The phased rollout makes the form fully available two months later than usual and comes as the 2024-25 form — which got a makeover after Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act in late 2020 — faced a series of highly publicized hiccups that the department has worked to fix.

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Earlier in September, the department  chosen to participate in the first testing period: Alabama Possible; Bridge 2 Life, in Florida; College AIM, in Georgia; Education is Freedom, in Texas; the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, in California; and the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria, in Virginia.

“Thanks to the wonderful organizations, we expect closer to 1,000 students in Beta 1 as opposed to the 100 we initially thought,” FAFSA executive adviser Jeremy Singer said on a call with reporters Monday regarding the 2025-26 form.

During this first testing stage, U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said the department will process students’ FAFSAs, “give students an opportunity to make corrections, if needed, and send the records to colleges and state agencies.”

“Colleges will be able to use these same records when it’s time for them to make financial aid offers,” said Kvaal, who oversees higher education and financial aid, including the Office of Federal Student Aid.

Three more testing periods

The department on Monday also named 78 community-based organizations, governmental entities, high schools, school districts and institutions of higher education to participate in its three subsequent testing periods for the 2025-26 form.

Three of the community-based organizations chosen to take part in the first testing period — Florida’s Bridge 2 Life; Texas’ Education is Freedom; and Virginia’s Scholarship Fund of Alexandria — will also participate in subsequent testing stages.

To help students and families prepare for the 2025-26 application cycle, the department said this week it’s releasing a revised , updated resources for creating a , including a “parent wizard,” as well as an updated prototype of the 2025-26 FAFSA.

Last week, the department released  outlining 10 steps it’s taking to . Part of those efforts include the department strengthening its leadership team and working to address issues for families without Social Security numbers when completing the form, in addition to vendors adding more than 700 new call center agents.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

While issues have plagued the federal government’s revamp of the application for student aid, West Virginia’s higher education leaders say help from Gov. Jim Justice and the state Legislature have caused the state to be much better off than others.

The 2024-2025 Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms debuted in January, than it’s typically available.

In April, over , allowing West Virginia students to bypass filling out the form and still be eligible for state school aid including the Promise Scholarship and the Higher Education Grant Program.

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In addition to the state of emergency, redirecting about $83.2 million from the state’s rainy day fund to the state Higher Education Policy Commission to be distributed to college-bound students for the fall college 2024 semester.

“By having the flexibility to make these adjustments, we have been able to alleviate student concerns about being able to afford to go to college this fall,” said Jessica Tice, senior director of communication for the state HECP. “We look forward to seeing final enrollment and award numbers in the coming months.”

The commission awarded funding through the Higher Education Grant Program to 43 ,510 students for the 2024-25 school year, up from 31,867 students awarded in the 2023-2024 year, Tice said. She added that the commission does not anticipate that every student who was awarded funding will use it.

In addition, 30 students who qualified for the Promise Scholarship but did not have a current FAFSA on file were awarded the scholarship as a direct result of the change, she said.

As of Monday, 63,291 West Virginia students had completed the FAFSA, Tice said.

Tice said the additional funding from the Legislature allowed the HEPC to increase the amount of the grant award from $3,300 last year to $6,800 this year.

“This is an unprecedented one-time amount for students who have financial need,” Tice said.

Also, the HEPC provided funding to institutions to allow them to provide $2,000 College Access Grants to students with more need, she said.

Tice said the concerns about the 2024-2025 FAFSA form are largely at the colleges and university level now. The federal Department of Education recently announced that colleges and universities won’t be able to submit batch corrections to files for aid this cycle, which will put a burden on the institutions, she said.

West Virginia University is receiving and processing the 2024-25 FAFSA and disbursements are on schedule, said April Kaull, executive director of communications. The first day of classes at WVU is Aug. 21.

“We want students and their families to know that they should apply for federal or state aid for fall 2024,” Kaull said. “If they’ve put it off or become frustrated and thrown in the towel, we can help. It is not too late to get financial aid in place for a successful start to the fall semester.”

Tice said higher education officials are concerned about the rollout of the 2025-2026 FAFSA form, which is expected to be

“As we continue working at the state level to do everything we can to award students state aid despite their FAFSA status, we are very concerned about the impact of another delay,” Tice said. “The FAFSA allows students to maximize their financial aid beyond state programs, and we want all of our students — especially those with financial need — to be able to access all of the funding they are eligible to receive.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

Now, with the start of the next financial aid season less than three months away, the U.S. Department of Education won’t promise it can avoid a repeat.

The department is “working toward” opening the Free Application for Federal Student Aid on time and ensuring “a smooth experience,” a spokesperson told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, but dismissed last week’s bipartisan vote by the House education committee to legally enforce an Oct. 1 start as an unhelpful “political stunt.”

comes as financial aid officials are dealing with another delay hindering some students from receiving final aid packages for the fall. The complications have also deterred others from even applying for assistance. Completion rates remain below last year’s rate, suggesting enrollment will stay down this fall.

“Are we going to close the gap? It would be a really herculean effort,” said Bill DeBaun, senior director for data and strategic initiatives at the National College Attainment Network, an organization of college access organizations. Summer, he said, isn’t typically FAFSA season. But even increasing the rate by 3 or 4 percentage points would mean “tens of thousands of additional” students receiving funds for college. 

Members of Congress say forcing the department to release next year’s FAFSA on Oct. 1 will avoid the confusion and chaos that families and colleges endured this year. “Establishing a hard deadline … will provide students, families and schools with much needed clarity and stability,” Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who chairs the House education committee, said before the July 10 vote.

Six Democrats on the committee who voted against the bill argued that Congress didn’t provide to help the department make the switch and predicted it could lead to even more errors. 

“I want FAFSA to work; we all want FAFSA to work,” said Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “What we don’t want is for the department to rush to meet arbitrary deadlines and push out a FAFSA form once again that has the same technical problems.”

‘A lot of anxiety’

Schools that predominantly serve students whose parents are not U.S. citizens — the population most harmed by the FAFSA overhaul — have been especially stressed.

“It’s been a rollercoaster,” said Ingrid Fragoso, a counselor at KIPP Austin Collegiate in Texas. Only about 10% of the charter school’s students have parents with social security numbers. The redesign first blocked them from completing the form and then required  to submit it. “In the beginning, there was a lot of anxiety around how to help our students.”

At the peak of the chaos, in February and March, the counseling team phoned the department daily to troubleshoot issues for families. While waiting on hold, the counselors used a detailed grid of each senior’s schedule to quickly grab students from class when a department staffer came on the line. For parents with limited English skills, they held practice sessions prior to calls. Now, all 91 students going to four-year schools have received aid packages.

Some counselors and higher education officials say they’re beginning to see the streamlined FAFSA’s potential.

“I feel a lot better about where we’re at than I did a few weeks ago,” said Karen Krause, the executive director of financial aid at the University of Texas at Arlington. The FAFSA completion rate is up 4% compared to last year, bucking and national trends, and the staff was able to begin distributing aid offers in April — ahead of many other . “I do think it’s going to be a better process for students and families.”

When FAFSA works, it works quickly — sometimes in less than 10 minutes. Students and parents who have submitted the forms, she said, keep asking, “Is that all?” The education department also kept to conduct fewer reviews of students’ forms. At UT Arlington, that number dropped dramatically, from over 5,300 last year to under 200, Krause said. 

At the same time, her staff is grappling with a new setback — a backlog of corrections the department . Those revisions ultimately affect how much money colleges can offer students, especially those whose financial circumstances changed since they first applied.

“Say a family member loses a job or there are medical expenses,” explained Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. In those cases, schools might issue a new offer to make tuition more affordable, but those figures won’t be official until the education department approves them. 

Currently, colleges can only one at a time.

“It’s manual and it’s way more work,” Desjean said. 

But they can’t submit them in bulk until next month, a time when students are usually preparing to register for classes and move into dorms. 

‘Answers for kids’ 

If higher education officials feel any sense of relief after such a stormy season, it’s partly because of their own work to ensure families don’t pay the price for FAFSA’s botched implementation. UT Arlington, for one, has waived late fees for students still waiting on federal aid and isn’t dropping them from summer classes if they can’t make tuition payments, Krause said.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency over FAFSA, allowing students to apply for state aid without completing the federal form. The move made 17,000 students eligible for merit- or need-based aid, according to a state higher education commission.

And at the University of Florida, Mary Parker, vice president for enrollment management, created a special that offers low-income students up to $15,000 to tide them over until their federal aid comes through. If they end up qualifying for less federal aid than the scholarship covers, they won’t have to make up the difference.

That short-term fix impressed one university official who understands the strain on families with first-time college students.

“It will not be perfect, but [Parker] had enough in her budget to eat the cost of the margin of error. It was more important to prioritize first-generation students,” said Penny Schwinn, the former Tennessee education commissioner who now serves as vice president for the university’s “pre-K to pre-bachelors” initiatives. “K-12 and states are wrestling with this, and it was a really proud moment to see my colleague find innovative and immediate answers for kids.”

But colleges are taking risks when they use their own funds to lower tuition costs for students, said Desjean, with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

“Not all schools can afford to front their own money while waiting for the federal dollars,” she said. “But it’s great to see that those who are able are doing what they can to minimize harm to students.”

Even when California high school seniors set a record last year in applying for college financial aid, , leaving gobs of money on the table.

Now, the state agency overseeing student grants and scholarships is about to embark on a new campaign to persuade more students and their parents to apply for financial aid. The strategy is buttressed by novel market research that produced counterintuitive conclusions about what compels people to seek cash for college.

It can’t come at a better time as financial aid applications in California and nationally compared to last year, largely due to major setbacks with the .

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Core to the is that low-income parents and students know that a college degree often leads to higher wages, but they have significant anxiety about .

“Nationally, we are grappling with this question about, ‘How do we communicate to students about the value of an education after high school and the return on investment?” said Jake Brymner, deputy director of policy and public affairs at the California Student Aid Commission.

Avoiding language that sounds too good to be true, such as “100%” of tuition covered, even if that’s technically accurate, was one lesson learned from a round of focus groups led by a public opinion research firm that the student aid commission hired with philanthropic funds. Imagery such as coins or bags of money implied scams, not the promise of affordability, the panel of parents and students told the market researchers.

And video testimonials from students who were frank about their ambivalence toward pursuing college, but mustered the will anyway to apply for financial aid, resonated deeply with participants of the focus groups, which took place between December and April.

“It was surprising to see that ‘free money,’ a phrase like that, leads to distrust at times,” said Michael Lemus, a marketing manager at the student aid commission who helps with developing videos the agency produces to explain the intricacies of applying for financial aid.

Added Sara Beth Brooks, who’s also on the team: “The basic values behind our social media channels is that we believe we can cut through government jargon and take information directly to constituents.”

Language on financial aid is persuasive

A survey conducted between May and June of nearly 1,200 high school students and parents showed an 11 percentage point jump among those who said they were likely to apply for financial aid, . The participants were asked if they would apply and then asked a second time after viewing the refined marketing material, which included a mix of video testimonials and written material across 20 minutes.

The idea to examine the best ways to reach students was . The findings from the focus groups and the survey were presented to commission members Thursday. CalMatters was given an advance copy of the results.

“Everyone talks about ‘you got to strengthen your communications, meet students where they’re at,’” said Marlene Garcia, of the student aid commission, at the meeting. “It isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s hard, and this team is figuring it out.

The likelihood of completing the state or federal financial aid applications  among the groups the California Student Aid Commission considered a priority — students with grades below a B or C average, those who were in low- and middle-income households and students who hadn’t taken the core high school courses required for admission to the state’s public universities.

State tuition waivers and federal cash grants that don’t have to be repaid can fetch students as much as $21,000 or more, per year. Without completing financial aid applications, that vital postsecondary assistance is unattainable.

“If we communicate effectively and meet people’s emotional needs, we can increase the likelihood that people will pursue” applying for financial aid, said Robert Pérez, one of the researchers behind the marketing analysis, at the meeting. He’s the founder of public opinion firm Wonder: Strategies for Good.

Specificity mattered to audiences, as well. It’s not enough to say “financial aid.” Parents and students were more drawn to messaging that stressed state and federal grants aren’t loans and don’t have to be repaid.

“I feel more calm knowing these are not loans, but aid,” wrote one mother during the focus groups.

Putting the findings on student grants to work

This summer, the outreach and marketing team will use philanthropic dollars to hire content creators on social media with large followings to publish videos about their own experiences seeking financial aid and completing community college. The team will time that with the Sept. 3 deadline for first-time community college students to apply for the Cal Grant, the main financial aid benefit in California.

The video team at the student aid commission will also feature more personal anecdotes about their paths into college. In another effort to appeal to students who haven’t applied for aid, the commission also will send recent high school graduates postcards with language and imagery informed by the focus groups.

The aid commission was already connecting on social media with students, parents, high school counselors and other professionals involved in the financial aid application process. One video in January than 6 million views on Instagram. It featured Brooks describing a step-by-step process to answer a confusing question on the new federal financial aid application.

The number of followers across the commission’s social media channels has grown prodigiously this past academic year. Last year it had 5,200 followers on Instagram and 800 on TikTok. This May, those grew to 58,000 followers on Instagram and 35,000 on TikTok.

“We could make graphics that explain these things, and I don’t think that they would do as well,” Brooks said. “It’s the human element of somebody saying, ‘I hear that you’re in this situation, I’m going to do everything I can to help you.’”

The videos aren’t slick by design — they often show a member of the outreach team in the car or in their office speaking candidly about how confusing applying for financial aid can be, especially this year when the newly revised federal application encountered a bevy of problems that blocked many students from submitting their applications.

Videos with low production value, high emotional impact

That humility resonates well with audiences, the focus group participants.

A video shown to them earlier this year featured a mother who spoke only in Spanish and her son, who spoke in English, sitting in front of a wall decorated with a crucifix and family photos. The video purposely avoided the slick digital treatment common in advertisements and instead appeared more like a low-budget documentary.

At one point the student, Kenny Funes, said he never felt poor because his parents provided for him, but he was surprised to learn that he qualified for a lot of financial aid because his family’s income was sufficiently low.

Another video was in Spanish and featured an undocumented student who applied for state aid. This and other videos were unscripted and edited down from about 75 minutes to under 3 minutes.

In a final video, a college student spoke about dropping out of high school and then feeling inspired to resume his education. As he’s speaking, the focus group participants respond in real time to how the video content makes them feel. Initially, the mood among the participants drops as the student describes the dead-end jobs he was working. Seconds later, the student recollects a phone call with his mom after she received distressing news from her doctor. That prompted him to return to college. The audience mood starts to climb, responding well to the narrative arc of temporary setback and eventual triumph.

The researchers said that had the videos just emphasized success, they wouldn’t connect as much with the audiences. “When we feel like we’re not alone, we feel like we can do it,” Pérez said. The sincerity prompts the audience to trust the student, which in turn encourages more people to complete the application, he added.

“I understand that frustration…not wanting to fill it out,” the student in the final video, Jesse Williams, said of completing the financial aid application. “Because it is a process.”

PĂŠrez and some of the commissioners also agreed that reaching parents directly will compel more students to apply for aid.

“I feel like the one thing that keeps a lot of students from trying, especially first generation students, is that their parents don’t know where to even start,” said Keiry Saravia, a student commissioner.

“Parents are incredibly important messengers and really underutilized,” Pérez said.

The was originally published on .

confirms that high school students who complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) are more likely to attend college than those who do not. This, of course, is the whole purpose of the federal financial aid program — to help lower- and middle-income students pursue higher education.

Despite the recent unfortunate — to put it mildly — rollout of the simplified FAFSA, the country would still be better off if all high school students completed the form. But even before the current fiasco, on the number of high schoolers filing the FAFSA was worrying. Access to federal aid is contingent on the FAFSA, and if students do not fill it out, they cannot access a major source of financial support for college.

Several states have moved in the right direction in requiring completion. One of the first, Louisiana, saw a 20% increase in FAFSA completions in one year after requiring high school seniors to complete the form to graduate. But the state is its universal FAFSA mandate over concerns about sharing financial information with the federal government, “invading” families’ privacy and jeopardizing their “liberty.” 

Worries about privacy seem misguided, as families share financial information with the government every year by filing tax returns, and much of the data in the FAFSA comes directly from these. Dropping a statewide mandate will not only hurt those students and families who might not learn about available financial aid; if fewer students go on to postsecondary education, it will make it more difficult for states to meet their higher education attainment goals.  This, in turn, will jeopardize the economic benefits to the state that accrue from having a more educated workforce.  

Hopefully, more states will require high school graduates to fill out the form. But beyond hoping, there is a way to make sure this happens: All colleges and universities could require the FAFSA as part of their application for admissions, whether students are applying for financial aid or not. 

This would create much stronger incentives for more states to mandate that high schools take on the responsibility of mandating FAFSA for their graduates. Even students who don’t require need-based financial aid receive large subsidies from both public and private nonprofit colleges and universities, because the full sticker price does not cover the actual cost of the education received. The difference can be quite large — in many cases greater than the value of a Pell Grant — both at public flagships and more selective private schools. The more selective the university, the larger the subsidies, since selectivity is closely related to the resources that colleges have available to spend on students. These are covered in a variety of ways that are supported by federal and state policies: direct government subsidies to colleges and universities; contributions from donors who receive tax benefits; exemptions from income tax on earnings on endowments; and local property taxes. 

If the FAFSA became a routine part of the college application process for all, it would level the playing field for all students in terms of required submissions and make it more likely that more high school students would receive the financial aid they need. Families that pay full freight might object, but the checks they write don’t cover the full cost of their children’s education any more than the small contributions asked of students who receive large scholarships. Why should the wealthiest families be treated differently than those applying for Pell Grants? Both are receiving public financial benefits, just in different forms. The burden on these families would be minimal since most of the information would come directly from the IRS.

Requiring the FAFSA from all applicants would also offer more information to policymakers on the income distribution of students attending college. Since both the federal and state governments heavily subsidize higher education, understanding how those subsidies are distributed across the population is important for making good public policy. These subsidies are, in part, justified on the basis of supporting economic and social mobility. Without knowing who is receiving them, it is impossible to evaluate their effectiveness.  

Having all families fill out the FAFSA whether they are applying for need-based financial aid or not would make possible better federal and state policies in support of the country’s higher education goals.

Citing issues with the federal government’s rollout of a new application for student aid, Gov. Jim Justice on Tuesday declared a state of emergency and suspended a requirement that college-bound high school seniors fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in order to receive state financial aid, including the Promise Scholarship and the Higher Education Grant Program.

The FAFSA form is required for applying for federal student aid and used to determine a student’s financial need. The form recently went through — its first massive revamp in more than 40 years — in an effort to streamline the process.

The changes are supposed to result in more students being eligible for financial aid, especially low-income students. The new FAFSA went live in January, three months later than the application is typically available, and has been plagued by a number of glitches and problems that have caused further delays.

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Justice said Tuesday the issues with the FAFSA have resulted in a 40% reduction in West Virginia high school FAFSA completion rates and have left students wondering if they’ll be able to go to college.

“So the way around this is for the governor to declare a state of emergency … in education that we can bypass this FAFSA stuff and we can at least get on with getting our kids the state funding,” Justice said during his administration briefing Tuesday.

Under the emergency proclamation, students who apply for and qualify for the Promise Scholarship by Sept. 1, 2024, will receive an award of up to $5,500 for the 2024-25 academic year. Students who completed a 2023-24 FAFSA who qualify for the need-based Higher Education Grant, will receive up to $3,400 for the fall semester.

Students who don’t have a previous FAFSA on file but are eligible for SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, CHIP, Child Care Subsidy Program or WIC can show their eligibility letter to their higher education institution’s financial aid office to receive the Higher Education Grant.

In a news release, Sarah Tucker, the state’s chancellor of higher education, said the cost of college is one of the biggest hurdles students — especially low-income students — face when planning for education after high school.

“That’s why our state has invested so strongly in our own financial aid programs — which, combined, total more than $100 million each year for West Virginia students,” she said. “I thank Governor Justice for his strong leadership and allowing students to access these funds this year despite their FAFSA status. And I encourage students to continue working to complete the FAFSA so that they can get as much money from other sources, including the federal government, as possible.”

The federal Department of Education on Tuesday encouraged students to fill out the FAFSA, saying that issues with the application have been resolved, .

Justice encouraged students and parents to call a state hotline at 1-877-987-7664 or visit for more information and assistance with applying for aid.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

Talk to some high school and college students about this year’s Free Application for Financial Student Aid, or FAFSA, and they share their concerns as well as their optimism. Few voice anger about the glitches that have made this financial aid season so stressful.

Why? Because they understand that is the key to $150 billion of college grants, work-study funds and federal student loans that will pay for college. They understand that FAFSA is not the enemy.

Regardless, the number of FAFSA submissions are down nationwide, including Texas, because of problems with the form that have delayed some students from completing the application and have discouraged others from attempting it.

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High school and college counselors, advisers and administrators know this and have scheduled a second wave of workshops now through early May to encourage students to fill out the form and submit it.

About 200 students who had questions about their application participated in the bilingual FAFSA Workshop on April 20 at the Education Service Center Region 19 to get answers. Almost all came with family members, a laptop computer and financial information with the hope that they could start, or submit their applications that day.

Among them was Yaxley Bouche, an 18-year-old senior from Austin High School. She and her mother, Diana, wanted to complete the parent portion. Once done, the student could submit her FAFSA.

“I’m a little stressed about how much money I will get,” said the Central resident who wants to study nursing at El Paso Community College or the University of Texas at El Paso. “Will it be less than others because I’m submitting (my application) late?”

With the help of a small army of volunteers, mostly from EPCC and UTEP, students found the guidance they needed.

The two institutions organized this special event and agreed to participate in others during the next two weeks to help other families that have been confused by FAFSA.

One volunteer helped Diana Bouche start an account, which will take three days to be verified. After that, her daughter can submit her application, which should be accepted in 10 business days.

“I’m not comfortable yet,” Yaxley Bouche said as she closed her laptop before leaving. “I’m still concerned with the wait.”

Fewer seniors complete FAFSA

According to the as of April 12, only 29% of high school seniors have completed their FAFSA. More than 1.2 million have submitted their application, but that is 36% less than this time last year.

The network’s numbers show that almost 34% of Texas senior class – approximately 373,000 – has completed the application. Since the Class of 2022, Texas has mandated that high school seniors submit a FAFSA, the Texas Application for State Financial Aid, known as TASFA, or sign an opt-out form.

In an effort to make the FAFSA process easier, Congress passed the . The new application was to be more user-friendly with fewer questions (36 down from 108). It also was supposed to expand the eligibility for federal financial aid.

The U. S. Department of Education released information late last year that the number of Texas students eligible for a Pell Grant under the new FAFSA would increase by almost 51,300, and the ones who would earn the maximum Pell amount would grow to about 132,700. A Pell Grant is federal need-based aid awarded to millions of students annually.

The DOE normally releases the FAFSA on Oct. 1, but this cycle’s forms were not released until the last week of 2023. Since its launch, the application has suffered several setbacks because of technology and human error.

Financial aid offers lag behind

Karla Cid, 18, and her mother, Veronica Cid, traveled from Fabens to participate in last weekend’s FAFSA Workshop. The parent did not have a Social Security number and the pair sought a way to create and verify the mother’s account.

“This is confusing to everyone,” said Veronica Cid, who, like her daughter, spoke through an interpreter. “No one can help. We’re all in the same boat.”

Cid, a first-year psychology student at EPCC, said she filled out last year’s FAFSA form and earned a Pell grant for almost $3,700. The 2023 Fabens High School graduate questioned why the government had to change the process.

“If I don’t fill out the FAFSA, I can’t go to school,” said the younger Cid, who works for a fast-food franchise in Fabens. “I’m stressed. If I have to pay out of pocket, will I need to work more?”

Despite her application ordeal, she was confident things would work out. Her Plan B is to take fewer courses and go part time.

Ian Valdez, a college and career adviser at Socorro High School through Advise Texas, said that he was aware that one of his students had received an aid offer from a four-year institution. Results of a survey done last week by the showed that 16% of public universities had started to send aid offers, while 54% of higher education institutions had not packaged aid offers yet. It also reported that at this point in a typical year, more than 80% of the institutions would have sent their aid offers to students.

Valdez said that among the main issues his students have shared during this FAFSA cycle included mixed-status families, or families with members of varying legal status, and poorly worded questions.

Another problem Valdez noted was the students’ procrastination. He said that about one in six have not even started to fill out their FAFSA despite his nudges and assurance of his help to get it done.

“They don’t know how easy it can be,” said Valdez, who volunteered at the workshop. Under the best circumstances, applications can be completed in 30 minutes or less. “If there is a problem, we can set up a one-on-one with them and their parents.”

‘We’ll fix the problems’

EPCC and UTEP echoed that suggestion. Officials asked students who need help with their FAFSA, especially to address challenges, to contact their institutions’ enrollment or financial aid offices.

“We’ll work with the families with questions, and we’ll fix the problems,” said Ines Lopez, EPCC’s executive director Student Financial Aid.

UTEP and EPCC officials said that their institutions had accepted fewer FAFSA forms than normal for this time of year, but were confident that the numbers would recover before the start of the fall 2024 semester.

“The (high) schools have reached out to us because their (FAFSA) completion numbers are low,” said Carlos Amaya, EPCC vice president of Student & Enrollment Services. “They wanted more FAFSA nights and we’re going to help them to beef up their numbers.”

Additionally, UTEP plans to conduct application workshops for its continuing students the week of April 29.

Amanda Vasquez-Vicario, UTEP vice president for Enrollment Management, said the university had received about 19,000 FAFSA forms so far. At this time last year, they had 25,000.

Vasquez-Vicario said she is “cautiously optimistic” in part because the institution has seen a slow but steady increase in the FAFSA forms from first-time college students.

The UTEP official said that her team tells students that there is no need to panic, but some, especially those from mixed-status families, are the most anxious. They wonder if they will get the necessary financial aid, she said.

Vasquez-Vicario said the enrollment staff assures students of the university’s commitment to help, and suggests alternative sources of financial aid such as UTEP’s Paydirt Promise program where most students from families with incomes of $80,000 or less could be eligible to attend UTEP and not have to pay tuition and mandatory fees.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

North Dakota state agencies are urging high school students to turn in their FAFSA applications amid a roughly 30% drop in statewide applications to the federal financial assistance program compared to 2023.

The North Dakota University System, Bank of North Dakota, North Dakota Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Department of Public Instruction and Governor’s Office have put together resources to encourage high school seniors across the finish line — including a new on the Bank of North Dakota’s website.

To that end, Gov. Doug Burgum on Monday officially declared this week “Finish the FAFSA Week.”

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The FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is the main way students access federal loans, grants and work-study funding to help with college tuition costs.

In December, the U.S. Department of Education introduced an updated version of the FAFSA — one the agency said would be easier than ever to apply to.

Brenda Zastoupil, director of financial aid for the North Dakota University System, called it the most significant change to the program in roughly 40 years. Implementation has been rocky, she said. Unforeseen snags in the application process have made it difficult for students to complete the FAFSA properly.

“That caused significant delays for not only the institutions to receive the FAFSA results, and then subsequently issue award letters to students, but it also obviously caused a delay for families to really understand and be fully transparent on what their awards will be for the upcoming fall semester,” Zastoupil said.

Those issues have coincided with a nationwide drop in FAFSA applications.

In North Dakota, about 27.8% fewer high school seniors had completed FAFSA applications as of April 12 compared to the same time a year ago, according to an analysis of Office of Federal Student Aid data by the National College Attainment Network.

Nationally, applications had fallen by 36% as of April 12 compared to last year, the nonprofit found.

Zastoupil said North Dakota institutions are worried about a drop-off of students who decide to postpone attending college because of all the tangles in the FAFSA process.

The Bank of North Dakota, the North Dakota University System, and a handful of North Dakota colleges and universities are offering extended hours Monday through Thursday to help students and families with applications. The bank will also host a webinar on the FAFSA on Tuesday from 7-8 p.m.

To view a list of the institutions’ office hours and contact info, and to register for the webinar, visit the Bank of North Dakota’s FAFSA .

Mark Hagerott, chancellor of the North Dakota University System, said in a Monday announcement from the Governor’s Office that some North Dakota colleges and universities are moving back enrollment deadlines to accommodate delayed FAFSA applications.

While not everything with the application process has been fixed, Zastoupil encouraged students to get their FAFSAs done as soon as possible. Often, higher ed institutions only have a limited amount of financial aid per school year, she said.

“For instance, our office administers the North Dakota State Grant,” she said. “And that is a need-based grant, so we use FAFSA data, but it’s also limited so once our funds are exhausted, we wouldn’t be able to issue additional awards for students.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. North Dakota Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Amy Dalrymple for questions: info@northdakotamonitor.com. Follow North Dakota Monitor on and .

While applications for federal student aid dropped by double digits across all 50 states this year, those with universal FAFSA completion policies seemed to fare slightly better, with the majority performing in the top half of the country.

Of the 10 states with the highest completion rates, three — Louisiana, Illinois and New Hampshire — have mandatory FAFSA policies for high school seniors. Across all states, Connecticut had the highest completion rate among high school seniors and Alaska had the lowest, according to the

Indiana saw the smallest change year-over-year in its completion rate and Tennessee had the greatest year-over-year swing, with a 44.3% drop — though it still had the second-highest completion rate in the country. Typically, the stronger states were last year, the further they fell this year, according to the network.

Experts attribute this relative success to the mandatory states having supportive infrastructure that provided students with the tools they needed to navigate the submission process in what has turned into a notoriously problem-ridden year.     

But no state has emerged from the process unscathed. 

“While there is certainly some variation across the states, the pattern holds,” said Katharine Meyer, fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center of Education Policy. “Where submissions are down, completions are down. There are large gaps between the high-income and low-income high schools and then it’s just the magnitude to which those play out in different states.”

This year marked the release of the new form following the , which was meant to streamline and simplify the historically complicated application for federal student aid, expand access to Federal Pell Grants for low-income students and change the way expected family contribution is calculated. But a botched rollout marred by delays and technical glitches — particularly for students whose parents are undocumented and don’t have Social Security numbers — has led to a dramatic drop in the number of students who have been able to submit the form. That’s left seniors in a lurch and both high schools and colleges scrambling.

Not all students have been impacted equally, though. Among those at higher-income schools — where fewer than half of students qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch — about 36% completed the FAFSA this year, while only about a quarter of students at lower-income schools have, according to the college attainment network. The year-over-year drop is also significantly higher for students at low-income schools with an almost 10-point difference. 

“It’s the lowest-income students, the first-generation students, who don’t have additional resources to guide them through this process, who are ultimately paying the price for this rollout,” said Meyer, “which is awful because the entire goal of the FAFSA Simplification Act was to target and support those students and make this an easier process.”

While there have always been gaps between students who have extra support and those who don’t, the added complexities and “minefields to navigate” on this year’s form exacerbated them, she added.
Overall, there’s been a in the number of forms submitted as compared to the same time last year, according to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ’s analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, and a in the number of forms that have been completed without errors, according to the college attainment network, whose members include school districts and nonprofits.

As of April 9, 16% of FAFSA applications still needed student corrections and about 30% of forms were potentially impacted by processing or data errors, according to a released by the U.S. Department of Education.

The completion rates are of particular significance, according to Bill DeBaun, the network’s senior director of data and strategic initiatives.

“Completions remain the target for NCAN and our members, and it’s what we’re encouraging the field to pursue,” he wrote to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “Having a college-intending student who was motivated enough to submit the FAFSA, but who did not connect with financial aid because of an error that they didn’t correct, is a tragic outcome.”

Sheri Crigger, a college counselor at the School of Cyber Technology and Engineering in Huntsville, Alabama, said the biggest challenge is for students who still don’t have FAFSA results or aid packages from schools, even as the traditional May 1 decision day deadline quickly approaches. Normally by now, she said, kids would be announcing where they’re headed in the fall and wearing their new schools’ colors. Instead, she said, there’s just a feeling of uncertainty.

“I feel for them because there’s not a fix for that until they have the information they need,” she said. “I like to be able to kind of point them in a direction [but this year] there is no direction.”

Changing the mindset from optional to required

Nationally, seven states — Illinois, California, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Indiana and New Hampshire — have implemented universal FAFSA policies and five additional ones — Connecticut, New Jersey, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma — have passed them, according to the network. Louisiana, which was the first state to implement a universal FAFSA policy in 2018, to roll theirs back this year. State lawmakers said they were reversing course for a range of reasons, including arguments that the policy prioritized college over trade schools — although federal aid can often be used for the latter — and that completion is a for families.

Elizabeth Morgan, the attainment network’s chief external relations officer, disagreed with their line of thinking.

“Universal FAFSA is not about penalizing students or holding students back,” she said. “It’s about changing the mindset from optional to required.”

Students — especially those from lower-income backgrounds — don’t always realize that financial aid is available to them until they submit their FAFSA form, Morgan added. They also might not know that the aid can be used at institutions other than four-year universities, such as trade schools and community colleges. Filling out FAFSA, she said, is important for these students because it fixes these misconceptions.
In states where there are mandates or universal FAFSA rules, schools are more likely to integrate support for completion into the school day and create more of a culture around it, leading to a significant increase in filing, according to Meyer, the Brookings fellow. Events such as FAFSA drives can also help to in a typical year by providing families with the tools they need to navigate the cumbersome, complex process.

When looking at the list of top submitters this year, a lot of them are states that have these mandates in place, Meyer said, suggesting that universal policies may have helped insulate them — and their students — during the messy rollout.

“They still aren’t good FAFSA submission and completion numbers… but it is less bad than in some other states,” she said.

Some experts in the field remain anxious that this will be an ongoing issue in future years. Meyer warned that there are already signs that next year’s form won’t be released on time once again. If the form is delayed but not riddled with errors, she added, students may still avoid this year’s chaos, especially since institutions are staffing up in anticipation.

“I do think long term I am an optimist,” she said. “I’m hopeful that this act will ultimately increase college access for those students, but it’s a bumpy couple of years in the process.”

But one person feels especially perturbed by the botched implementation of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

Lamar Alexander — former governor of Tennessee, U.S. education secretary and Republican leader of the Senate education committee — thought the would be his legacy.

He was so bound up with the quest to streamline the process that he became known for  the 108-question paper form at press conferences.

“There are not many things that happen in Washington, D.C., that really improve the lives of 20 million American families every year,” he told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ last week. “This did, and once they implement it properly, it will be a great relief to these families.” 

But the string of delays and mean that three months after the rollout, some high school seniors still don’t know if they’ll be able to afford college.

“I’m very disappointed with it,” he said. “​​If they spent more time figuring out how to implement FAFSA and less time forgiving student loans, they might have done better.”

Alexander, 83, served as governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987 and then as president of the University of Tennessee until President George H. W. Bush appointed him as education secretary. But he said it wasn’t until he was in the Senate that he understood how much of a barrier the form was to some students getting into and completing college.

In a brief interview, Alexander discussed how he would have handled the rollout differently, his ongoing work advocating for higher education in Tennessee and writing his political memoirs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ: For readers who don’t know the history, why was simplifying the FAFSA so important to you?

Lamar Alexander: In 2005, the third year I was a senator, a group of college presidents from Tennessee came to see me and explained that the complexity of the 108-question form was the single biggest obstacle to low-income students going to college. It was difficult to fill out and many low-income students needed to get their grandmother’s tax returns. Maybe she didn’t have them or didn’t want to give them. They talked about the verification process, which means that if you made a mistake on the form you might lose your Pell Grant in the middle of your first semester. I was too junior at that time to do much about it, but 10 years later when I became the ranking Republican on the education committee I got busy on it. 

As time went on, Gov. Bill Haslam in Tennessee signed offering two years of free tuition for community colleges. Filling out the FAFSA was the single biggest obstacle to two years of free tuition for Tennesseans going to college. When I had a hearing on it — I can still remember the day — we had witnesses from many different points of view, and I asked four witnesses to write a letter each explaining what they would do. They looked at each other and said, “We don’t have to write four letters. We can write one. We all agree.”

Did your frustration with the process begin when you were a university president?

I didn’t pay that much attention. I didn’t really see the size of the problem. I didn’t know it affected 20 million families every year. What people forget is you have to fill this out every year, and it’s easy to make a mistake. That means it’s easy to lose your scholarship. 

How much have you paid attention to the chaos that has unfolded over the past few months?

I hear about it first hand — the problems it’s causing right now with admissions officers who are having a hard time telling families how much financial aid they’ll receive and families who are having a hard time deciding what school they can attend. I’m hearing a lot about it, not so much from the news. 

There’s really no excuse for it. The problem is not the law. The law was thoroughly vetted.

If you were still leading the department, how do you think you would have handled the implementation? 

If McDonald’s has a new hamburger, they don’t roll it out to the whole country. They test it in a few markets, sometimes for a long time. This is too important to 20 million families just to throw a big mess out to them. That would have been the wise thing to do, to say, “OK, we’re going to gradually begin to implement this, and we’re going to test it and make sure it works. And then within a year or two more, we’ll make it available to all 20 million families.” 

I’m very disappointed with it. ​​If they spent more time figuring out how to implement FAFSA and less time forgiving student loans, they might have done better. 

Do you miss being in the U.S. Senate? 

I miss my friends, but I had 18 years. That’s long enough, and I’ve moved on to other things.

When I was in the Senate, I would tell people, “It’s hard to get here. It’s hard to stay here, and while you’re here you might as well try to accomplish something. And you can’t accomplish anything in the Senate unless you get 60 votes.” I learned how to count in the Maryville City Schools. So you have to work across the aisle if you want to get a result. There’s no reason to run if all you want to do is make a speech. You can do that at home.

How are you spending your time now?

I’m on the . Number two, I’m helping the University of Tennessee create the , which was just officially dedicated. And number three, I’m helping Maryville College, in my hometown, create a . It will have an environmental education program, which fits. We’re right in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, which is one of the most biodiverse places in the world. I’ve gotten drawn back into higher education without trying.

I’m also writing a memoir. I’m about finished with that. I kept a diary, so there are lots of interesting stories, interesting people, lots of things that I got to work on that didn’t make much news — like fixing FAFSA — but helped a lot of people.

At Noble Street College Prep, counselors are urging seniors to log into their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, daily to check on the status. As the U.S. Department of Education scrambles to correct months of mistakes, changes in the system can pop up unexpectedly.

“Updates happen in the middle of the night, sometimes in the middle of class,” said Michelle Ganti, dean of college counseling at the Chicago charter school.

In New York, the school district will join with to host evening and weekend FAFSA sessions for students and families where they can get help from college representatives and financial aid experts. 

Similar FAFSA support activities will be underway nationwide. But is it too little, too late?

A Wednesday House billed as a response to the “FAFSA fail” attracted bitter attention to the department’s missteps from of the aisle.

“We need weeks of action,” said Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network, told Congress Wednesday. “We’ll have to look for ways to continue to support and access students through the summer.”

Education Department officials say they “will continue to listen and be responsive to groups and advocates … who are helping students and families navigate the challenges.” 

They’re encouraging more in-person events as well as email campaigns and text reminders to nudge families to submit the FAFSA. The concerted effort might boost completion rates, which are still compared with last year. But with this year’s application process beset by delays and miscalculations, experts — and educators already helping students navigate the chaos — aren’t convinced everything will go smoothly. And they say time is short to get the neediest students the assistance they need.

“It’s hard for all of us not to be cynical in front of families and to really stay as positive as possible,” said Kim Nauer, a financial aid expert at The New School in New York. She’s in constant communication with counselors across the city and runs a to keep families updated on the ever-changing situation. Case in point: As she spoke to a 74 reporter Thursday, the FAFSA website began allowing users to make corrections on their forms for the first time.

Those hardest hit by the delays include students who are likely to opt out of college altogether this year and institutions that might because they rely on low-income students who depend on federal Pell grants. 

Experts are also increasingly worried that aftershocks of the debacle could be felt for years to come — starting with the next financial aid cycle for the 2025-26 academic year.

In a normal year, the department would have released a paper version of the form by now to allow the public to comment on changes before the new application opens Oct. 1. While the modifications won’t be as drastic as this year’s, there are typically some wording changes. But with officials tied up trying to get corrected financial information to students and colleges for this fall, that new form isn’t out yet, potentially creating another time crunch for next year’s seniors.

Mark Kantrowitz, who leads , told members of the higher education subcommittee Wednesday that he “[lacks] confidence” the department will be able to get the process back on track.

‘Moving full speed’

In a statement, a spokesperson said the department’s Federal Student Aid office “has prioritized the overhaul of the FAFSA form and has been moving full speed to implement the bipartisan law to make this experience far better for those completing the form.” On Monday, Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten will participate in a for families, hosted by the National Parents Union.

The series of failures began last October when the department was unable to make what the administration renamed a “Better FAFSA” ready for the typical application window. In a “soft launch,” the form became available in December, but technical glitches prevented many students from completing it, particularly those with undocumented parents who lack social security numbers. 

In February, the department released a designed to allow parents affected to complete their portion, but Nauer, in New York, said, “In order to know that that seven-page sheet exists, you have to have a counselor who’s telling you about it.” 

, and some, were further outraged in January when the department until March the date to send students’ financial information to colleges, giving them far less time to turn around financial aid offers before deciding which school to attend — a deadline that typically falls on May 1.. Even then, some of the data , keeping families and schools in limbo.

On Tuesday, the department’s Federal Student Aid office the extent of the damage and detailed officials’ attempts to undo it. Students need to make corrections on roughly 16% of applications. Processing errors are affecting about 30% of the forms, and about 20% require corrected tax information . 

Rachelle Feldman, vice provost of enrollment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, spelled out the consequences of the delays during this week’s hearing. 

“I really worry that we will lose the lowest-income, high-talent students, that they’ll choose not to enroll in college,” she told Democratic Rep. Alma Adams of North Carolina. “That will be bad for the entire economic and social mobility of our state.”

‘An incredible strain’

The troubled application period comes as college enrollment rates continue to reel from the pandemic, when the number of undergraduates entering colleges and universities declined by In her comments, Cook expressed concern that this year’s drop could be just as dramatic, and said a million more high school seniors nationally would need to complete applications by June 30 to hit last year’s submission rate.

With the end of the school year just weeks away in some parts of the country, she stressed time was limited to help students whose forms are incomplete or need corrections. “Time really has to be well spent with the students that we still have access to,” she said.

At North County Union High School in Newport, Vermont, just south of the Canadian border, that works out to about 170 seniors, including many who would be the first in their families to go to college.

Counselors from the Vermont Student Assistance Corp.’s have worked to help students get over the hurdles in this year’s process, said Principal Chris Young. 

“But my biggest concern is that they just are going to give up,” he said. Even “very well-educated families” can’t make decisions about which admission offers to accept, he said. “It’s an incredible strain on families.”

He said about 70% of his school’s seniors typically go to college, with most attending schools in Vermont and Maine and some heading south to warmer climates in the Carolinas or Florida. For about one-tenth of those students, financial aid offers determine not which school they’ll attend, but whether they’ll go at all.

One harried student came to him recently, saying he thought he’d been able to complete the form without a hitch. Then, Young added, “he realized he’d filled out last year’s.”

Just one week out from Indiana’s deadline for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, the latest data shows only about one-third of Hoosier high school seniors have completed the form.

That’s despite a new state law that took effect last year requiring all graduating seniors to complete the FAFSA or affirmatively opt out of filing by April 15.

The shows that 33.8% of the 2024 class had submitted the form as of March 29, equal to 30,109 Indiana high school seniors. That’s nearly 6,000 fewer Hoosier student submissions than at the same time last year, and slightly below the completion rate of 35% for this year’s high school class nationwide.

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Still, officials with Indiana’s Commission for Higher Education (CHE) remain confident that they’ll meet their goal of having 60% of high school seniors submit their FAFSA by the priority deadline. Students can still file after April 15, but state financial aid will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis.

“We are hopeful,” said Allison Kuehr, CHE’s associate commissioner for marketing and communications, noting that other data shows improvement “which is a great sign for potentially meeting that 60% goal.”

Bumps in the road

The decrease in the number of 2024 FAFSA filings is a nationwide trend, with only about 35% of high school seniors submitting the FAFSA form across the country as of March 15, marking a 27% drop, according to the National College Attainment Network.

Nearly 48% of graduating 2023 high school seniors across Indiana, specifically, completed FAFSA last school year, according to .

Kuehr suggested two factors have led to the decline in financial aid applications.

In years prior, FAFSA became available Oct. 1. Changes to the application last year — meant to simplify the submission process — delayed its opening until late December and likely caused the lag of submissions.

CHE previously got FAFSA completion data a few weeks after the application launched in October and would get updates from the federal government “almost immediately” during the monthslong submission window, Kuehr said. This year, Indiana officials didn’t receive data until last month, and they’re still “ingesting” those numbers, she added.

Hiccups with the federal government’s rollout of the updated, streamlined FAFSA form have also further complicated matters and delayed when many students will receive their financial aid offer, Kuehr said.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education indicated that about 330,000 federal financial aid applications will need to be reprocessed following the latest FAFSA complications.

Of the over 6.6 million FAFSAs submitted in the current cycle, about that would make students eligible for less financial aid than they are entitled to, according to the education department. The agency is expected to begin reprocessing these applications in the first half of April.

“While we do not have enough information to do an exact calculation, from all the information that we have received, we anticipate that as many as 20% of the students that we have received information from so far will be impacted and will need to be reprocessed,” Kuehr said of the expected impact, which represents at least 6,000 Hoosier students.

Given the issues and delays, multiple Indiana colleges and universities pushed back their admissions deadlines, including Indiana University Bloomington and , which both extended their deadlines to May 15.

Millions in aid still up for grabs

Even so, Kuehr pointed to “success” already prompted by , signed into law last year.

The measure, which made FAFSA a requirement in Indiana, was promoted by Republican Sen. Jean Leising of Oldenburg as a way to get more students to apply for federal aid, given that Hoosier students left at least $65 million in potential federal aid unclaimed in 2022.

CHE and other state officials have long supported ongoing efforts to increase FAFSA submissions — part of an effort to .

The new law made Indiana the eighth state to have some type of FAFSA filing mandate for high schoolers. There are no penalties if a student fails to submit the application, however.

“(The law) requires high schools to make at least two reasonable attempts at providing students with information about the FAFSA before being able to broadly opt students out, so there has been a concerted statewide effort to increase awareness and participation in FAFSA completion,” Kuehr said. “A level of these efforts have always existed prior to the new law, but this year, there is a definite push.”

CHE is spearheading other efforts to increase the number of FAFSA submissions, too, including the to Hoosier students from Indiana’s higher education intuitions.

Kuehr emphasized that CHE also sends “almost daily email reminders to students to file as a countdown to the deadline.” The commission is additionally partnering with the Indiana Latino Institute and INvestEd to host Facebook Live events and answer common questions about the FAFSA in both English and Spanish.

Across the state, CHE outreach coordinators are in schools and communities to provide one-on-one assistance, Kuehr said.

And with filing rates for low-income and underrepresented students especially low — only 28.5% of students from those groups submitting their FAFSA form, lower than the overall state and nationwide rates — Kuehr said CHE is making intentional outreach to students who are part of the 21st Century Scholars program, which provides low-income students in Indiana with tuition and fees fully covered if they attend an in-state college or university.

“Outside of the commission, we know school counselors and higher education institutions are providing their own FAFSA nights for students and parents to receive help,” she said, also noting that INvestEd will continue to host FAFSA nights around Indiana. “It truly is an all-hands effort.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

Amid a tumultuous application season for federal student aid, Utah public universities are taking special measures to allow students relying on those funds to plan for their enrollment.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, experienced this year. First, with a three-month postponement of its usual October rollout because of the implementation of a new simpler system. Then, there were calculation errors on applicants’ net worths since the Department of Education failed to take into account inflation.

The delays may have an impact on students’ ability to commit to a school and secure scholarships, housing and early spots in certain courses. However, some colleges in Utah have allowed more flexibility to deal with the setbacks.

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The University of Utah, the state’s flagship higher education institution, announced Monday that it would extend its enrollment deposit deadline to June 3 for incoming freshmen and transfer students to help alleviate the pressures of the ongoing FAFSA complications.

“We recognize that choosing where to attend college is one of the biggest financial decisions a family can make,” said Steve Robinson, senior associate vice president for enrollment management in a . “Given the latest FAFSA delays, we want to ensure all admitted students have time to learn about aid packages available. We feel it is in their best interest to provide more time so that they can feel confident before committing to the university.”

In addition to that, the release says, the U. is offering a more flexible schedule for housing; all students who submit an application by June 5 will be guaranteed on-campus student housing. The May 3 “priority application deadline” will remain in place for those who would like to participate in a first round of traditional housing room reservations.

Other Utah schools don’t have an enrollment deadline, allowing students to register until the fall semester.

Utah State University, for example, advertises a priority enrollment confirmation date of April 1 so students can plan their access to campus housing, scholarships, orientation and class registration, Amanda DeRito, USU associate vice president for strategic communications, said in an email.

However, those who didn’t make the early deadline can still secure their housing and enrollment and later submit their enrollment deposit with the first semester tuition payment.

“We do not want the FAFSA delay changing students’ decisions to attend USU,” DeRito said. “We will award federal aid as soon as we are able, so students have a realistic view of their costs. Until then, we want students to continue on their path to becoming an Aggie and we are here to help them through any questions they might have.”

Salt Lake Community College is an open enrollment school and accessible to all prospective students until the first day of school on Aug. 20, said Ryan Farley, vice president of enrollment management in a statement.

“All current or prospective SLCC students pursuing federal financial aid being affected by the Department of Education’s FAFSA delays will be held harmless and accommodated by Salt Lake Community College,” Farley said. “We have experts ready anytime during business hours to assist with filling out the new FAFSA form and ensuring all students receive the aid they are eligible for despite the FAFSA challenges this year. That will continue up to and past the start of classes this fall.”

Southern Utah University also allows students to enroll anytime before the beginning of the semester, Nikki Koontz, the school’s assistant vice president of marketing communications said. However, SUU is taking action so students feel supported through the financing process.

“In light of the evolving circumstances, we’ve extended our scholarship application deadline until school begins,” Koontz said. “This extension means that students still have the opportunity to qualify for the majority of our academic merit awards, even if they decide to enroll closer to the start of the semester.”

Utah Tech University doesn’t require an enrollment deposit, so the delays haven’t immediately impacted applicants there. But, its staff is following the FAFSA process closely to best serve students, Jyl Hall, director of public relations said.

Same with Weber State University, which doesn’t have such deadlines or deposits, Rachel Badali, news coordinator for the school said in a statement.

“We know it’s so important for students to have clear information on their costs, and we’re hopeful we can start getting financial aid packages ready in early May,” Badali said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

With an array of more than 50 state financial aid programs available to college students, public higher education officials are embarking on an effort to simplify those offerings by 2026.

The Department of Higher Education plans to evaluate gaps in financial support as officials consider redesigning the mix of tuition reimbursement, grant, loan forgiveness, and tax programs, said Michael Dannenberg, deputy commissioner of policy. The overhaul is meant to expand education access, improve affordability, and ensure that aid delivery is reliable and predictable, he said.

“So part of our analysis will look at the ultimate unmet need or need of students, whether they are in state or out of state, whether they’re receiving financial aid programs from the state or not from the state,” Dannenberg said during a virtual Board of Higher Education meeting Tuesday. “We’ll try and simplify, and highlight, (and) prioritize those for needy families and socioeconomic mobility.”

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Dannenberg said that developing a “more coherent financial aid system” would also focus on ensuring students complete their degrees and certificates.

Earlier this year, Department of Higher Education launched its Massachusetts Application for State Financial Aid (MASFA), a portal that’s meant to mimic the federal FAFSA form and allow undocumented students to unlock the millions of dollars available in state aid programs.

Nearly 400  have been submitted or are in progress for the 2023-2024 academic year, with another 230 applications in the pipeline so far for the next academic year, a Department of Higher Education spokesperson said Monday.

Dannenberg said at least 34 state financial aid programs serve less than 10,000 students, and more than 20 programs reach less than 2,000 recipients. At least two dozen state financial aid programs are not based on economic need, and at least 16 programs have a median award value under $2,000, he said.

Officials do not want to harm current financial aid recipients, and some programs may need to be adjusted with a grandfather clause to protect them, Dannenberg said.

The deputy commissioner showed board members a list of the programs, with some serving categories of students, including athletes, children of September 11 victims, foster and adopted children, and aspiring educators, paraprofessionals and nurses. Also on the list were recent major expansions of financial aid, including making community college free for adults ages 25 and older and covering tuition costs and fees for Pell-Grant eligible students.

“So we’ve got a lot of programs, a lot of very small small programs, and a lot of programs that are not linked to economic need,” he said.

As the redesign continues, Dannenberg said, the plan is to conduct analyses this spring and summer, and review redesign options with the board in the fall. Officials would then seek input from advocates, experts, and others at the start of 2025, share recommendations by spring of 2025, and prepare to implement the changes for the fall of 2026.

Beyond the state’s financial aid portfolio, higher education officials are grappling with the ripple effects of the severely delayed launch of the updated Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The form only became available in January, compared to its typical fall rollout, after the system experienced multiple glitches with new funding formulas. During Tuesday’s board meeting, state officials urged students, including those frustrated by the FAFSA’s challenges this year, to still complete the form.

Students need to submit the FASFA by May 1 for “priority consideration,” though officials are considering extending that deadline due to the form’s delay, said Clantha McCurdy, senior deputy commissioner of access and student financial assistance.

The Department of Higher Education is spending $1 million on “strategies” to boost FAFSA completion rates, said Robert Dais, director of GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. Dais did not offer examples, and said the department has partnered with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on ideas to “excite and incentivize students.”

The funding, outlined in the fiscal 2024 budget, can be used on public awareness campaigns and FAFSA “completion clinics.”

“We are targeting Gateway Cities and students from historically underserved populations,” Dais said. “There’s more to come soon, but essentially we just wanted folks to know that the Department of Higher Education is clearly focused on improving FAFSA and MASFA completion rates, and doing everything that we can to ensure that the neediest students are doing so.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.