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Erika Turner and her husband have 11 children between them. Four of them are already in college, two are graduating from high school this spring, and her husband has gone back to school in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.
“I have seven people depending on the results of their FAFSAs coming back,” said Turner, who lives in Cohutta, Georgia, near the Tennessee border. “That’s a lot of tuition to pay for – you know, financial aid never fully covers everything. You’ve got other expenses, like books, food and room and board and just things that come up during the year. So, as we think about budgeting for this next school year… I don’t like the unknown.”
The Education Department says that last year about 17.5 million people (both high schoolers and older students) completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA; so far this year, only about 4 million have successfully done so.
Turner and her family filled out the new version of the FAFSA in one marathon session in January. Because of the government’s delays in launching and in processing the forms, Turner’s family is among the many still waiting for their applications to be processed. Turner works as the head of human resources for a flooring manufacturer and her husband works as an environmental health and safety manager for a field turf company.
She hopes the returning college students in her family will eventually receive similar aid packages as they have in years past and will be able to persist uninterrupted. For the two children filling out the FAFSA for the first time, she is less certain. One son plans to attend a private liberal arts college in Georgia, Turner said, and the other is likely headed to technical school.
“Obviously, that’s not as much of a financial burden on us as a family, but it’s still money I don’t necessarily have set aside to pay for that,” Turner said. “We’re depending on Pell Grants and things like that to help close that gap.”
Turner’s family will also rely heavily on outside scholarships. That’s how she first got to know Stephanie Young, the director of scholarships at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga.
Young focuses on helping students and families figure out how to pay for college. That’s a tough job in normal years, but it’s required a near-herculean lift this year because of the delays and the domino effect they are having on the rest of the process.
Colleges use the FAFSA to determine which grants and scholarships students are eligible for, but they won’t get that information until at least March, so award letters likely won’t go out until sometime in April. Colleges typically require students to confirm their enrollment by May 1, but because they will be so delayed in sending financial aid award information, scores of colleges are extending that deadline. Some are even devising their own forms to ask students directly for financial need data, hoping to give them at least some estimate of what aid to expect.
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Students often rely partly on outside scholarships, but these scholarships, too, are often awarded based on student need, which is typically determined using the FAFSA.
Young manages many such scholarships and has had to quickly pivot from her normal timelines and procedures to meet the needs of scrambling students and families. Because of the delay in FAFSA forms becoming available, the application figures on some scholarships that require FAFSA information are down significantly.
One such scholarship that typically has about 100 applications by mid-February, this year had 12, Young said. She could see that about 200 applications for it were in the midst of being drafted, but she thinks students haven’t been able to submit them yet because their FAFSAs haven’t been processed yet. This scholarship typically opens its application process in November and closes it at the end of January. This year, it didn’t open until January, and it will remain open until at least March 2, Young said.
The delays could result in students walking across the stage at high school graduation (which in the South can be as early as the second week in May) not knowing whether they will be able to afford to attend the colleges they were admitted to.
“My concern is either students will make a snap decision, go to a school and then not be able to fully enroll because they don’t have enough finances to meet the need, or they may wait too late to decide and lose a spot,” Young said. “Will they be at the ones that are the right fit, that are the most affordable to them?”
Young is especially concerned about first-generation students and students from low-income families. Those parents, she said, “may not have the wherewithal to walk through this process with them. So a lot of it falls back on the schools trying to do that or myself in any way that I can jump in and help.”
Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the advocacy group Complete College America, said she’s worried that the “domino effect” started by the delayed FAFSA is going to eventually affect college completion rates.
“The FAFSA has already been a very intimidating form and the process,” she said. “Even with FAFSA simplification efforts, we’re now seeing that the simplification is not all that simple.”
Because of the delays and glitches, fewer students have been filling out the FAFSA, Watson Spiva said. If fewer students apply for aid, fewer students have the opportunity to compare offers and select the best college for them, and, she suspects, fewer students will go to college.
Related: Louisiana makes filling out FAFSA a ‘fun’ contest to engage students
She said that she’s been hearing from prospective college students that it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble, that waiting a year might be a better decision. But delaying college or taking a gap year makes people less likely to attend college, she said.
Advocates for higher education are perpetually trying to “convince folks that there is a value proposition to go into college,” she said, “This actually doesn’t help us to make our case, unfortunately.”
And there’s a risk for students who are already enrolled, too. Many students leave college because they can’t afford it, and if they can’t get timely information about their financial aid, she thinks it could prevent them from re-enrolling.
“Regardless of whether you’re a prospective student or a current student, college is not easily affordable,” Watson Spiva said. And for many families, “getting the financial aid award letter saying that you’ll have resources is really make or break.”
The pressure to figure it all out is weighing on Chattanooga native Maurquez Thompson, a first-year student at Stanford University.
Thompson, a first-generation college student, said he pays his tuition using a combination of grants and scholarships. He said he’s overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the requests for extra documentation from scholarship providers that are trying to sidestep the need for FAFSA data to determine awards for students. He knows Stanford meets full financial aid for its students, but the extra processes still add stress.
“If the first year of college was just like it is right now for the FAFSA, I think I’d be crying. It’s too much,” Thompson said. “I think the FAFSA right now is the hardest thing people are dealing with.”
This story about FAFSA changes was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.