Federal education officials announced a grant program this week to speed up the processing of the troubled Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms or FAFSA. Students need to file the form to determine financial aid eligibility but a late release of the updated form, miscalculations and numerous technical glitches are causing major delays at colleges nationwide. U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal told reporters Wednesday that grants will be available to school districts and other groups to conduct FAFSA clinics and provide after-school advisors.
“Students who complete a FAFSA today can expect their records to be sent to colleges within one to three days,” Kvall said. “We are continuing to make this process as smooth as possible for all students.”
Gwendolyn Glenn: But Davida Haywood, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Johnson C. Smith University says the process is still anything but smooth.
Davida Haywood: We were preparing for some of the delays and I’m not sure that we were thinking that we’d be sitting in the month of May and still having some of the challenges that we are experiencing, which are so very similar to other institutions. Some of our students are still hitting some of the error walls that are part of the new FAFSA namely parents' tax information, there were some glitches there. There were also some glitches around individuals who may not have had a Social Security number and now there is a workaround to encourage those students to go back in and attempt to finish the application. We've also gotten, you know, some calls from students about, ‘hey, I'm in the system. I've come to a standstill and nothing is advancing.’ So we're making ourselves available when students hit those walls.
Glenn: Well, what percentage of your students apply for federal aid?
Haywood: So we are sitting roughly at about a 69-70% Pell-eligible status, which means a number of our students complete the FAFSA. A number of them would not be able to finish their education here at Johnson C. Smith University without completing that FAFSA, so it is key. And while we're saying, hey, you need to go ahead and get your classes for fall, we also need you to complete the FAFSA but you may encounter an error.
Glenn: Do you know how many packages have been sent out, especially to that freshman class? Is it 10%, 20%? Because I've talked to a lot of schools and some of them are saying they are so far behind because of these glitches with the forms.
Haywood: I wouldn't even put that at a 10% at this point just because of the ongoing glitches because part of our errors at the moment, it's just being connected to the federal database, called Edconnect. You have to be connected to that in order to be able to access the student information, so we can't even get to packaging because if I'm not fully connected, I'm not pulling down the most accurate information. I don't know of any institution among my colleagues that are readily cranking. We're just not there.
Glenn: Well, have you extended deadlines? Because I know a lot of schools May 1, which has passed, was the deadline to commit and so many schools have pushed it to May 15 or in June.
Haywood: We don't really have a set deadline for students to officially declare. JCSU has always operated as a rolling admissions institution, so even if you have not applied and been accepted before May 1, you still have time almost up to the start of the new academic term to apply.
Glenn: I would imagine that with you having such a high percentage of students who probably will need financial aid, that that's causing a bit of stress with the students.
Haywood: And for us, but again, we remain hopeful that some of these kinks will work themselves out, that we can continue to serve as a resource for parents and students and that they can begin making some firm plans.
Glenn: And one thing that I talked to some schools, they said that because of the glitches they are having to process some of the applications by hand because of errors and miscalculations. Are you guys having to do that?
Haywood: Yeah and that's not a fun process at all because there's so many federal regulations. Having our people, and I will tell you they are, they are stressed out, positively stressed out, but they remain hopeful, but that manual process is tedious. But what we don't want to do is either under-award a student or over-award a student. There are significant consequences for an institution that has not abided by the federal law, and we don't want to find ourselves in that position.
Glenn: And you said you have 450 slots and less than 10% of those financial aid packages have gone out, so that's less than 50.
Haywood: Yeah, it's pretty low, but it's consistent across where we're seeing other colleges and institutions. But I would encourage families to continue to explore external scholarship opportunities. As a UNCF (United Negro College Fund) school, we're driving high school students to go ahead and set up their profiles on the UNCF website because UNCF actually has some pre-college scholarships that are made available to high school seniors right now. Financial aid is one means but we want you to look at scholarships and grants first. Loans should be your last resort, so if you still have access to civic and social organizations that have scholarships available, if your faith institution may have scholarships available, use this time to still apply because every dollar counts.
