After months of delays and technical hiccups, some colleges and universities have started to receive federal data they need to put together financial aid offers for incoming students, the Biden administration said earlier this week.
The Education Department says it sent a first batch of student records to a few dozen universities on Sunday and is making final updates before expanding to more universities.
Several community colleges and universities in Oregon started receiving records earlier this week, including Portland State University. As of Thursday, the large urban university had received 18 student records.
“It sounds small, but it was a big deal,” said Chuck Knepfle, vice president for enrollment management at Portland State. “These are actual records we can send through our systems to see if it’s going to work for the other 30,000 we expect to receive.”
Other schools in the state have received student records but are still working through software problems to process them.
The delay has cut into the time colleges usually have to assemble financial aid packages before the typical May 1 deadline for students to commit to a university. Many colleges have extended enrollment deadlines as they wait on the federal government, leaving families across the nation wondering how much financial help they will get with college tuition.
Portland State has rolling admissions, rather than firm deadlines, but the school encourages students who want to start in the fall semester to commit to a priority date of June 15.
“We hope to have financial aid offers start to go out in the middle of April,” said PSU’s Knepfle.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid overhaul delayed the form's usual rollout from October to late December. The department then soft-launched the new version to address lingering bugs in the system, but many families reported difficulties accessing the form.
Congress ordered the update in 2020 to simplify the notoriously complex form and expand federal student aid to more low-income students. The new application reduces the number of questions from 108 to fewer than 50, and it uses a new and more generous formula to determine eligibility for federal student aid.
The delays have had cascading impacts across higher education. FAFSA information is used to award state and federal education grants, with colleges using the data to assemble financial aid packages for prospective students. In the meantime, families often have only a murky idea of how much they would need to pay, which can be a dealbreaker when choosing colleges.
Oregon’s Office of Student Access and Completion uses FAFSA information to award grants like the Oregon Opportunity Grant and the Oregon Promise Grant. OSAC said in a statement the information coming out will help institutions “troubleshoot” their systems.
Advocates fear the holdup will deter some students from pursuing higher education at all, especially those who were already on the fence.
For students who are continuing to have trouble applying, Knepfle recommends staying in touch with financial aid offices at their preferred schools.
“Students should really watch closely for communications from their schools to make sure that they’ve got everything they need,” said Knepfle.
Repeated delays have become a blemish for the Biden administration, which has blamed Congress for rejecting requests for more money to overhaul information systems and update the decades-old application process.
Republicans in Congress say the Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation into the administration's handling of the overhaul.
Every year, about 17 million students submit the FAFSA as part of their applications for financial aid. So far, 5.5 million students have been able to fill out the new FAFSA form, according to the department.
The department updated its formula to account for inflation, which will increase the amount of aid students are eligible to receive. But the initial release didn’t include the updated inflation tool.
In a letter to the department in February, over 100 Democratic lawmakers pressed for answers on how the department planned to minimize the impact the delays have had on families.
“Any delays in financial aid processing will most impact the students that need aid most, including many students of color, students from mixed status families, students from rural backgrounds, students experiencing homelessness or in foster care, first-generation students, and students from underserved communities,” they wrote. “For institutions to support students’ ability to make informed decisions about their future, they need clear guidance and resources from the Department immediately on any and all next steps."
OPB reporter Tiffany Camhi contributed to this story.
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