FAFSA fiasco could end in fewer college students going to school
Fewer college students are filling out the FAFSA
As of March 8, solely 31% of the highschool class of 2024 had accomplished the FAFSA, in keeping with the Nationwide School Attainment Community, a 33% decline in comparison with a 12 months in the past.
“We’re getting to a degree the place youngsters are simply giving up on it,” mentioned Anne Zinn, a faculty counselor at Norwich Free Academy in Norwich, Conn. “They’re so extraordinarily pissed off they simply do not know what to do.”
“There’s additionally a psychological facet of this,” Kantrowitz added. “College students don’t have any confidence that they’re going to get the monetary assist they should make faculty reasonably priced and they’re opting out.”
The FAFSA serves as the gateway to all federal assist cash, together with loans, work examine and grants, the latter of that are probably the most fascinating sorts of help as a result of they sometimes don’t should be repaid.
Below the brand new assist formulation, a further 2.1 million college students needs to be eligible for the utmost Pell Grant, in keeping with the U.S. Division of Schooling.
Nevertheless, given the slower tempo of FAFSA purposes being submitted, “the variety of Pell Grant recipients shall be about the identical as final 12 months, regardless of the brand new Pell Grant formulation making it simpler for college kids to qualify,” Kantrowitz mentioned.
“The purpose of FAFSA simplification was to extend the variety of lower-income college students making use of. If now we have fewer due to a foul rollout, it is extraordinarily problematic,” he added.
FAFSA completion paves the way in which to school
Submitting a FAFSA is among the finest predictors of whether or not a highschool senior will go on to school, the Nationwide School Attainment Community discovered. Seniors who full the FAFSA are 84% more likely to right away enroll in faculty.
Nevertheless, previously, many households mistakenly assumed they wouldn’t qualify for monetary assist and did not even hassle to use. Others mentioned a prolonged and overly sophisticated software was a serious hurdle. Some mentioned they simply did not have sufficient details about it.
“I by no means deliberate to attend faculty as a result of I knew my mom could not afford it,” mentioned Tikai Harvey, 19, a sophomore at Hunter School in New York. Harvey solely discovered in regards to the FAFSA her senior 12 months of highschool, she mentioned. Earlier than then, “I did not know federal grants existed.”
In bizarre years, highschool graduates missed out on billions in federal grants as a result of they did not fill out the FAFSA. The plan to simplify the 2024-25 kind was meant to enhance faculty entry.
This 12 months’s rollout has not achieved that, Kantrowitz mentioned. “It is a full mess.”
