In the thick of a calamitous financial aid season, the Biden administration is trying to regain the confidence of colleges and the students they serve. But is the damage already done?
New FAFSA site causing frustration for students
For the first time since the 1980s, the Department of Education has updated the FAFSA application.
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Early this year the Education Department shared what appeared to be objectively good news.
Millions of college financial aid forms – commonly referred to as FAFSAs, or Free Applications for Federal Student Aid – had been successfully submitted, the agency said in an announcement on Jan. 30. Federal officials had also updated their aid calculations to make it “as simple and easy as possible for families to get help paying for college,” according to the agency.
But tucked into the fifth paragraph of that bulletin was a troubling tidbit: Colleges and universities would not receive students’ financial aid data until the first half of March, more than a month later than the government had promised.
It was the first time the agency acknowledged the setback, another wrench thrown in the financial aid process for colleges and students. Many schools, it turned out, did not get a critical mass of the records they needed until the end of March.
What’s more, the “update” the department touted as a victory was more of a correction to a massive problem. In crunching the numbers for how much millions of families could afford to pay for college in the next school year, the agency failed to account for inflation. Amid mounting scrutiny, officials course corrected. The January announcement was part of that reset.
Yet the dissonance between the department’s seemingly rosy missives and the realities students have been facing prompted some to accuse officials of spreading a “false positive narrative.” Critics argue the federal government’s less-than-transparent messaging cast a pall over one of the most important higher education reforms in recent decades.
“It’s hard to trust anything by now that the department is saying,” said David Sheridan, the director of financial aid at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Read more: Colleges to Education Department: We don’t have enough time to process FAFSA information
Widespread frustration with the information coming out of the Education Department has only grown in recent months, eroding Washington’s relationships with colleges, high school guidance counselors and the students they serve.
Even some staffers at the Office of Federal Student Aid, the branch of the Education Department that administers the FAFSA, were miffed at their bosses’ handling of the rollout, two agency officials not authorized to speak publicly told USA TODAY.
And the problems haven’t let up. On Monday, the agency revealed it botched another set of applications, shortchanging hundreds of thousands of students on financial aid. Officials promised they would reprocess those applications by mid-April, practically guaranteeing more delays for some.
The department also underestimated how much money roughly half a million students could put toward their college bills next fall. Whether some penny-pinching schools will ask the government to recalculate those numbers remains to be seen.
In the meantime, FAFSA applications are down by about a third from last year, which means colleges across the country may be on the cusp of an enrollment nightmare.
Among college officials, the mood is grim.
“The rollout of the new FAFSA has been plagued by issues of broken trust, data integrity, and missed deadlines,” Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement Tuesday.
Read more: Millions of students may have just weeks to compare college financial aid offers
When the government gives students money to help pay for college, it isn’t just handed over. The financial aid…
This article was originally published by a www.usatoday.com . Read the Original article here. .