The Education Department says it will fix its $1.8 billion FAFSA mistake

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to making higher education possible for more students, including through ensuring students qualify for as much financial aid as possible,” the spokesperson stated in an announcement.

The FAFSA mistake had school monetary help workplaces frightened

“The polite way to say it is, wow. I mean, I was shocked.”

That’s how Brad Barnett, the monetary help director at James Madison University in Virginia, describes studying in regards to the mistake.

“I get that there’s complexities in building and programming a new system. OK. But forgetting to put the right numbers into a table that now has created all this consternation and delays really surprised me.”

The FAFSA is new this yr as a result of Congress handed a regulation ordering the Education Department to make sweeping adjustments. The thought was to make it simpler to fill out and to offer extra lower-income households entry to federal help. Families like Myrna Aguilar’s.

“I am a single parent. In addition to my son, my mom lives with us, so we’re a multigenerational family, which is awesome,” Aguilar informed NPR.

Aguilar’s son, David Thornton, is learning mechanical engineering at Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California, the place he simply completed his first semester.

“It was fun,” Thornton says, carrying a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with “Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering.” “There were a lot of events that I really enjoyed. My classes were very interesting. Stressful, but interesting.”

Thornton obtained plenty of assist paying for school, together with a $1,500 Pell Grant from the U.S. authorities. Pell Grants are for lower-income college students and don’t should be paid again. That’s necessary as a result of after Thornton crammed out the brand new FAFSA a few weeks in the past, the Education Department despatched him an e-mail with a shock: Next yr, it says, he’s going to lose that $1,500 Pell Grant, although it’s unclear why.

“That actually is equivalent to an extra mortgage payment,” Aguilar says. “That’s, you know, inconvenient.”

She insists this gained’t hold her son from returning to Cal Poly, which he loves. She’ll save and fill the hole, if that’s what it takes. But she desires to know: Why did this occur?

It may be due to the division’s FAFSA mistake. Financial help specialists inform NPR it’s tough at this level to know for sure.

“We’re in a situation where we really can’t help students or their families,” says Charles Conn, a prime help administrator at Thornton’s college, Cal Poly Pomona. “They’re getting some data from the Department of Ed. We’re not.”

Because of this yr’s large FAFSA overhaul, Conn says, the Education Department is basically behind, and it’s telling faculties they gained’t be getting any monetary help knowledge for college kids like Thornton till the tip of this month, on the earliest.

“[That] really cripples our office and our ability to fulfill our role, which is to help students and their families make sense of all of this,” Conn says. That consists of serving to Thornton and Aguilar perceive what occurred to his Pell Grant.

With no particulars on the fix, monetary help timelines are nonetheless within the air

The Education Department says it will fix the FAFSA mistake this yr, however it didn’t make clear how or when. And it’s unclear what influence any fix would have on universities’ monetary help timelines.

Before the division shared its resolution, NPR spoke with a dozen monetary help specialists and directors throughout the U.S. — at faculties large and small, private and non-private — to listen to how they suppose the division ought to handle a possible fix.

“I don’t know what the best option is. None of them are good,” says Karen Krause, the manager director of economic help for the University of Texas at Arlington.

Option 1: The Education Department can attempt to fix this shortly, earlier than it sends any pupil FAFSA knowledge on to schools.

The downside with that choice is that even a fast fix will take time, additional delaying the scholar knowledge that universities want. Without that knowledge, faculties can’t even start to provide you with monetary help presents to ship to households.

“It’s nausea-inducing,” says Christina Tangalakis, who manages pupil help for Glendale Community College, in Glendale, California.

There’s additionally an choice 2, she says, the place the fix takes lengthy sufficient that the division has to go forward and ship faculties knowledge it is aware of is flawed, with a promise to replace the information as quickly as it can. That method, faculties can not less than give households one thing, a form of start line. But Tangalakis worries that for a lot of lower-income college students, these preliminary award letters could be too low.

“How many students will be discouraged by what they see on paper and not even attend?” Tangalakis says.

We heard this concern lots.

“Our students absolutely are relying on this,” says Scott Skaro, the monetary help director at United Tribes Technical College, in North Dakota.

He says tribal faculties will be hit particularly arduous by this uncertainty as a result of greater than 80% of their college students qualify for a federal Pell Grant.

“[Students] may just go find some low-paying job that’s gonna pay the bills now, and they’ll just give up on school,” Skaro worries.

Robert Muhammad, director of economic help at Howard University, shares that concern.

“Some students may truly feel defeated and decide not to pursue their education at this time.”

Most of the monetary help specialists informed NPR that they need the division to rush up and make this fix now, earlier than any award letters exit.

Is that life like? Tangalakis, of Glendale Community College, says that shouldn’t matter.

“When we were headed to space, Kennedy said we do things because they’re hard. This is something hard, but it’s necessary.”

Many college students have simply over three months left earlier than they’re anticipated to commit to a school. But faculties say that in the perfect case, it will nonetheless be weeks earlier than they’ll start sending out monetary help presents.