For years, Senator Lamar Alexander was recognized for theatrically unfurling a paper doc so lengthy that he might maintain it above his head and nonetheless see it drag alongside the chamber flooring. It was the Free Software for Federal Pupil Help, or FAFSA, a type that each school scholar and their household should full to be eligible for federal grants and scholar loans. Detractors argued that its size (greater than 100 questions) and complexity (consultants joked that you just wanted a Ph.D. to finish it) deterred college students from getting assist and attending school. In December 2020, on the eve of Alexander’s retirement, Congress lastly handed laws to simplify the shape, with implementation in the end scheduled for the high-school class of 2024. It was a uncommon win for bipartisan, commonsense governance: much less paperwork, extra youngsters going to school.
That was the concept, anyway. In apply, seemingly each section of the implementation has gone mistaken; an ostensible technique of simplification has made enrolling in school a lot tougher. And whereas the federal government scrambles to repair the issues it created, time is operating out for a complete nation’s value of high-school seniors. The impact on school attendance threatens to be even worse than the coronavirus pandemic was.
The difficulty started final fall. First, the Division of Training introduced that the FAFSA, which often launches October 1, wouldn’t be on-line till December. It went stay on December 30, simply days earlier than the deadline set by Congress—then went darkish lower than an hour later. By the second week of January, the FAFSA was up across the clock, however that didn’t imply the issues have been over. College students and fogeys reported being randomly locked out of the shape. Due to some mysterious technical glitch, many college students born within the 12 months 2000 couldn’t submit it. And college students whose dad and mom don’t have a Social Safety quantity couldn’t fill out the shape. The division reported “extraordinary wait instances” as its helpline was clogged with calls.
On January 30, the day earlier than the division was set to transmit the finished varieties to schools, it introduced that the varieties really wouldn’t exit till mid-March. It used the time to alter its assist formulation to account for inflation (its failure to take action had left some $2 billion in awards on the desk). “We all the time knew it was going to be rocky, as a result of the modifications have been so huge and vital,” Amy Laitinen, the director for increased training on the suppose tank New America, instructed me. “However I don’t suppose anyone might have imagined how rocky. I don’t even know if rocky is the best phrase at this level.” Different consultants steered options: “nightmare,” “unprecedented,” and “a large number throughout.”
Now most college students can a minimum of fill out the applying, however the general state of affairs stays disastrous. The division has processed greater than 4 million varieties, however 2 million stay in bureaucratic purgatory. And though faculties have ultimately begun receiving the data that enables them to calculate student-aid awards, points maintain cropping up. Many colleges are reporting dramatically increased error charges than standard in submitted FAFSAs, and the Division of Training says that college students gained’t be capable of repair their varieties till early April. Final week, the division introduced that its processing system had incorrectly calculated assist for about 200,000 candidates. Every mix-up delays when college students learn how a lot assist they’ll get—which, for a lot of candidates, determines the place they’ll enroll or whether or not they can afford to go to school in any respect. Many faculties require that college students enroll by Could 1, doubtlessly giving candidates simply weeks and even days to resolve the place to attend.
Much more worrying are the scholars who won’t enroll wherever. In keeping with Invoice DeBaun, the senior director of knowledge and strategic initiatives on the Nationwide School Attainment Community, 31 % fewer high-school seniors have submitted the FAFSA in contrast with this time final 12 months—a doubtlessly lacking cohort of 600,000 college students. That’s a bigger decline than occurred in any 12 months through the pandemic, and it’s disproportionately clustered amongst faculties with excessive shares of low-income college students, the precise people who find themselves least prone to go to school with out monetary assist. One other 2 million adults, largely present school and graduate college students, have but to use for the upcoming tutorial 12 months. “Each time you identify any form of a barrier to school entry, it results in a everlasting drop-off within the variety of functions,” Mark Kantrowitz, a financial-aid skilled, instructed me. With declining enrollment, small faculties with excessive charges of low-income or minority college students might fall into monetary peril, Fitch Rankings warned earlier this month.
“We’re completely going to see a decline in college students going to school,” Laitinen mentioned. “The query is how catastrophic it will likely be.”
Relying on whom you ask, the FAFSA rollout is a narrative both of inadequate funding within the public sector or of presidency overreach and incompetence. Each accounts might have some reality to them. “Everybody blames everybody else,” W. Kent Barnds, vice chairman of admissions and monetary assist at Augustana School, instructed me. “However I believe the fact is that no one made this enormous, generational change a precedence.”
Congress handed the legislation within the waning days of Donald Trump’s time period, however implementation largely fell to the incoming Biden administration. The job proved formidable. “The scope of the modifications are large,” Catherine Brown, the top of coverage and advocacy on the Nationwide School Attainment Community, instructed me. “They modified every little thing from the method to the shape itself to the system for figuring out federal scholar assist, they usually modified it abruptly.” Making issues tougher nonetheless, the FAFSA overhaul was simply one in all many main challenges dealing with the Division of Training, which was additionally charged with distributing COVID-relief funds, finishing up Joe Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness plan, updating its loan-servicing system, tightening rules round career-training packages, and resuming student-loan funds after the pandemic pause. These duties have been primarily the duty of the workplace of Federal Pupil Help, a small group of staff nestled throughout the broader division. Preston Cooper, a senior fellow on the Basis for Analysis on Equal Alternative, instructed me that the Division of Training would have had sufficient time to finish the congressionally mandated FAFSA simplification if solely the Biden administration hadn’t loaded it with so many different priorities.
Others blame Congress, which stored the division’s price range stagnant even because it assigned it extra work to do. In the course of the 2023 price range course of, Congress appeared prepared to offer the division extra money. However the effort turned snarled within the politics of student-loan forgiveness. Republicans reportedly provided funding to rent new workers, however demanded that the cash not be used for student-debt cancellation. Democrats rejected the deal. Nick Hillman, an education-policy professor on the College of Wisconsin at Madison, mentioned that the “hollowing out” of the division compelled it to depend on third-party contractors to finish its technical fixes. (The web infrastructure was written in COBOL, a pc language invented through the Eisenhower administration.) However the corporations missed deadlines and had bugs of their code.
By March 2023, it turned clear that the FAFSA rollout wouldn’t go as deliberate. Division workers indicated that the shape wouldn’t open till December. “At that time, I believe it was full-on panic in increased training,” Robert Kelchen, an education-policy professor on the College of Tennessee at Knoxville, instructed me. Since then, the Authorities Accountability Workplace has, at Congress’s request, begun investigating the errors. Exactly what went mistaken and why continues to be up for debate.
For now, the Training Division is concentrated on containing the harm. Workers are working 12-hour shifts, and spare manpower is being shunted towards FAFSA processing. The division introduced in February that it could ship staff to assist faculties course of college students’ monetary information. And earlier this week, it urged states to delay their priority-aid deadlines, and to maintain a money reserve for added college students who full the FAFSA. Greater than 100 faculties have already pushed again their enrollment deadlines.
But even when faculties change their deadlines and the division will get via its FAFSA backlog, that also leaves 2.6 million fewer college students who’ve submitted functions in contrast with this time final 12 months. Training consultants are skeptical that every one and even most of them will fill out the FAFSA in time to begin school this fall, though technically there’s nonetheless time. The largest fear is the 600,000 high-school seniors who’ve by no means utilized for assist earlier than. Kevin Carey, Laitinen’s colleague at New America, factors out that almost all younger individuals aren’t on a set path to school. They’re weighing whether or not to go to high school or take a job. “Should you don’t even know what the fee is in your cost-benefit evaluation, you simply go together with the profit” of getting a job, Carey instructed me.
In the long term, practically everybody appears to imagine that the brand new FAFSA can be higher. Low-income college students will in the end get extra assist, and extra college students can be eligible for grants. The consultants I spoke with mentioned it would even be definitely worth the cascade of delays and errors. However we simply may sacrifice the category of 2028 to get there.
