{"id":38125,"date":"2024-05-31T10:29:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T14:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/?p=38125"},"modified":"2024-07-02T12:38:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:38:43","slug":"cronkite-news-native-students-among-those-affected-by-financial-aid-snafus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/2024\/05\/31\/cronkite-news-native-students-among-those-affected-by-financial-aid-snafus\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronkite News: Native students among those affected by financial aid snafus"},"content":{"rendered":" ]\"Be<\/a>
Brielle Giesemann, a High School Coordinator for the Be A Leader Foundation, helps a student navigate the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) during a FAFSA drive at Betty H. Fairfax High School in Phoenix, Arizona, on February 9, 2018. File Photo by Stephanie Morse \/ Cronkite News<\/figcaption>\r\n
Thousands of college-bound Arizona students still in financial aid \u2018limbo\u2019 in wake of FAFSA snafus<\/div>\r\n
Friday, May 31, 2024<\/div>\r\n
By Grey Gartin and Keetra Bippus<\/div>\r\n
Cronkite News<\/DIV>\r\n
cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A><\/DIV>\r\n

<\/p>\r\nWASHINGTON, D.C. — Defects with the federal application for financial aid have left thousands of Arizona students still unsure if they can afford college — or at least, how much they\u2019ll have to pay \u2013 with less than three months to go before classes start.

<\/P>\r\nThe uncertainty is far more widespread in Arizona than in most states. As of May 17, only about 28% of graduating high school students in the state had completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid \u2013 far below the 42% national rate, and well off last year\u2019s pace, according to a tracker<\/a> from the National College Attainment Network. At this point a year ago, just over half the class of 2023 nationwide had completed the FAFSA form.

<\/P>\r\nUntil colleges receive the data from the federal Department of Education, they can\u2019t assess a student\u2019s financial need and generate an award offer.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cFor a family to make a decision whether or not their child should go to work \u2026 or go off to school, that money issue is the make or break,\u201d said Darrell Marks, Native American academic adviser at Flagstaff High School.

<\/P>\r\nThe Department of Education revamped the FAFSA last year, intending to make it more straightforward, but the rollout has been plagued by glitches and delays. The initial launch failed to adjust for inflation, and students whose parents didn\u2019t have a Social Security number were unable to submit the form.

<\/P>\r\nCollege officials and high school counselors have said for months the glitches created needless barriers for families struggling to afford college, especially those in which no one had yet attended college.

<\/P>\r\nOn Thursday, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced a \u201cfull-scale review\u201d of the financial process, with new senior leaders and an outside consultant charged with recommending improvements. On Friday, Cardona will visit a FAFSA clinic in Phoenix for high school students and parents at South Mountain Community College.

<\/P>\r\nDruv Ravikumar, 17, who graduated from Paradise Valley High School in Phoenix on May 23, is still awaiting a financial aid offer from Georgia Institute of Technology, which he is set to attend. Classes start Aug. 19.

<\/P>\r\nHe submitted his FAFSA in January and said that part of the process went \u201cpretty quickly.\u201d Other schools he applied to provided aid offers in April and May.

<\/P>\r\nA classmate, Brock Behrend, 18, did get an aid award from the college he\u2019ll attend in the fall semester, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana, though it came a few months later than expected.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cIt was delayed a while and we couldn\u2019t get access to it, and that was pretty frustrating,\u201d Behrend said. \u201cThen when it did open up, it gave my dad trouble. \u2026 It was super struggling with how they could log in.\u201d

<\/P>\r\nAnd unlike some friends, he never got his Student Aid Index, which the system is supposed to generate based on the FAFSA. The SAI is used by schools\u2019 financial aid offices to help determine how much aid students can receive.

<\/P>\r\nRoughly 6,800 fewer graduating seniors in Arizona had submitted a FAFSA compared to the same point last year, according to data from the Federal Student Aid website<\/a> \u2013 a dip that financial aid experts attribute to problems with the new FAFSA.

<\/P>\r\nArizona\u2019s public universities extended their FAFSA priority deadlines to May 1 from earlier in the spring as the Department of Education delayed the release of data from the FAFSA forms.

<\/P>\r\nThe increase in the completion rate coincides with FAFSA outreach actions taken by Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Board of Regents.

<\/P>\r\nLast Friday, the Department of Education announced<\/a> it had processed over 10 million FAFSAs and touted \u201csignificant progress\u201d in remedying issues with the new form. That\u2019s still short of the 17 million total<\/a> applicants in the 2022-2023 aid cycle.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cKnowing that there’s so many students caught in limbo with the FAFSA process this year, we wanted to make sure that they know that all of our universities are willing to work with them,\u201d said Julie Sainz, the Arizona Board of Regents director for FAFSA and College Access Initiative<\/a>.

<\/P>\r\nABOR will make sure students seeking to attend an Arizona university can get the FAFSA done \u201ceven if it goes into the summer,\u201d she added.

<\/P>\r\nFor low- and moderate-income students, especially, the FAFSA is crucial. A key goal of the revamp was to expand the number of students eligible for Pell Grants, which can go up to $7,395 per aid cycle.

<\/P>\r\nThe Department of Education projected that about 610,000 more students nationwide will get some grant under the program this year, and 1.5 million more will be eligible for the maximum amount, bringing that total to 5.2 million.

<\/P>\r\nIn Arizona, 29,678 more students are projected to be receiving some Pell Grant funds for the 2024-25 award cycle, and 62,897 more are expected to get the maximum amount.

<\/P>\r\nThe rollout of the new FAFSA was delayed almost three months due to the redesign.

<\/P>\r\nThe form is usually released in October, giving high school seniors time to complete it before moving on to college applications due weeks later. The new form wasn\u2019t available until Dec. 31.

<\/P>\r\nThe FAFSA is also used for other scholarships, such as the President Barack Obama Scholars Program at Arizona State University.

<\/P>\r\nAlberto Plantillas, an ASU graduate student in public policy and an Obama Scholar, said the FAFSA defects deterred him from filling out the form once it finally went live, which was months later than usual.

<\/P>\r\nHe \u201cjust kept reading that there\u2019s a ton of problems,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fact that the FAFSA was so inefficient this year probably also meant that a lot of people were discouraged from applying to college,\u201d Plantillas said.

<\/P>\r\nHe\u2019s a regional director for the Arizona Students\u2019 Association<\/a>, a student-led group that advocates for lower college costs and has worked with the Student Debt Crisis Center and other groups to keep students informed.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cWe can inform people on the issues, but if they can\u2019t apply to the school they want to, that\u2019s going to affect them in the long term,\u201d he said.

<\/P>\r\nIn April, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced a $500,000<\/a> \u201cInvestment in FAFSA Initiatives,\u201d using federal funds to boost completion rates. At the time Arizona ranked 49th nationally in FAFSA applications. It\u2019s now up to 48th, according to NCAN data.

<\/P>\r\nABOR is using the funds to host regional FAFSA workshops<\/a>, offer more virtual appointments with FAFSA experts, make counselors available through the summer to help with financial aid, and launch a social media campaign to promote FAFSA completion.

<\/P>\r\nFor Native American students, FAFSA delays have made it harder to obtain need-based tribal scholarships.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cI have a few students that are still trying to complete it (the FAFSA form) right now that have graduated. \u2026 Their parents are having trouble navigating it,\u201d said Marks, the adviser at Flagstaff High School.

<\/P>\r\nStudents and parents had trouble understanding parts of the form because of the wording of certain questions, he said.

<\/P>\r\nKyra Benally, 17, a graduating senior from Flagstaff High, picked Northern Arizona University<\/a> because it offers full coverage of tuition and fees for members of one of the 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona \u2013 she\u2019s Navajo and Paiute.

<\/P>\r\nBut that full ride scholarship requires completion of the FAFSA.

<\/P>\r\nAlthough she submitted the form without complications, she had to wait until May to receive her aid offers and decide which college to attend. In a typical year, those offers are delivered around the same time as admission \u2013 late spring at the latest.

<\/P>\r\nSome classmates faced even worse snags.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cA lot of them struggled because some of their guardians on the reservation don\u2019t have birth certificates since they had an at-home birth, so it was hard to verify that they were U.S. citizens,\u201d Benally said.

<\/P>\r\nFrank Amparo, dean of student affairs at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, said some students need only 10 minutes to complete the FAFSA and haven\u2019t faced any problems.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cWhere it tends to impact us is that a majority of our communities may be first (generation to attend college), and our first-gen population is not used to working in a financial aid application,\u201d he said. \u201cThey’re still getting used to the college jargon, the process (and) what the expectations are.\u201d

<\/P>\r\nThe issue has hit colleges big and small, he said, \u201cand they’re both doing what they can to support<\/a> \u2026 that population of students as much as possible.\u201d

<\/P>\r\nAt ASU, Matt L\u00f3pez, deputy vice president of Academic Enterprise Enrollment and executive director of Admission Services, said he expects the problems to continue to unwind through the summer.

<\/P>\r\n\u201cI\u2019m optimistic that we\u2019re going to see significant gains,\u201d he said.

<\/P>\r\n\r\n

<\/p>\r\nFor more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org<\/A>.<\/STRONG>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News<\/a>. It is published via a Creative Commons license<\/A>. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication<\/A> at Arizona State University<\/A>.<\/EM>
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