By Jack Leal
This year, there have been delays in students getting their FAFSA information nationwide. Students applying for college in the next academic year have a deadline to submit an application in order to secure financial aid based on their family’s financial need. The federal government rolled out a simpler version of this form due to the Simplification Act, passed on Dec. 27, 2020, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. However, these progressive strides toward making the FAFSA process easier also led to complications.
The delay struck this year primarily because of a past policy called “Prior-prior,” implemented in 2016. This policy allowed families to provide income and tax information from the year before. Vice President for Enrollment Matthew Boyce told The Trail, “When families file for aid, they are looking at their tax information from the year prior.” He explained that “for the last several years, we opened up the ability for a family to complete their FAFSA in October, which means if institutions would start to receive that a month later, we would start to see that information come to our system by November.”
The information available by November typically gives financial services the time to distribute financial aid information to families by December. However, according to Boyce, the Department of Education had not set up the system correctly, which resulted in not getting the information until the beginning of January. “So that’s a three-month delay immediately,” Boyce said. He also mentioned there was “A crash in the system in January and an inability of the Department of Education to make adjustments, so we didn’t see families really capable of completing that FAFSA form till the end of June.”
These delays have had major impacts on students at the University of Puget Sound. Allison Locke (’24), an English major, aims to get her master’s in teaching at the University of Puget Sound. “I had to make my decision already before the FAFSA came out and still had no idea what financial aid I could get for my master’s program,” she said.
The effects of these delays still haven’t been fully resolved, and students are either waiting for their information or have received it and are waiting for their grants to be finalized. Locke says, “There’s still some lag for sure because it’s not fully done yet. Once it’s been processed, you get an email that says this is how much you’ll get from this grant, and this is how much you’ll get from that Washington grant, so it’s not really finalized yet. So, as of right now, I only have the scholarships for my master’s program that the School of Education provides.”
Computer science major Alex Meislich (’24) had similar worries about his master’s program in Copenhagen. “I’m still waiting for my FAFSA to go through, and I’m coming up on my master’s program’s payment deadline,” he said. “I must pay about $9,000 for the first semester out-of-pocket.” Without financial aid information, Meislich was put in a tough spot. “I would have talked to a family member or gotten a loan from a bank, like a private loan or something. But it would have been much more difficult if I were in a slightly different position, which I am lucky not to have been,” Meislich said.
These delays have also affected students psychologically because it made their future plans uncertain, causing unwanted stress and anxiety. Sociology & anthropology major and student-athlete Gannon Griffin (’24) believes that “having payments become delayed adds unnecessary stress when applying for the next terms.” He adds, “Although this issue hasn’t affected me as much as others, I’m sure a huge logistic and psychological impact has developed as a result of this problem.”
These delays are happening nationwide, meaning institutions are racing to find solutions. Multiple teams at the University level are working to minimize the issue’s effect on campus. “We need to applaud the work that’s been done in student financial services, tech services, and our admissions office to get this done. I’ve just been really in awe of everything they’ve been able to accomplish,” Boyce said.
Boyce’s first suggestion for students navigating financial hardships is to contact support services. “The great benefit of being at a small institution like this is that our team cares deeply. You could walk to the Student Financial Services office on the lower floor of Jones and ask questions or email sfs@pugetsound.edu.”
Boyce explains that this problem is more than just a minor error; it ripples across the country on a macro scale. He says these delays have “created a huge problem for families around the country; we see fewer families filing the FAFSA, upwards of 30% less than last year.”
Meislich agrees and believes this problem is part of a greater issue with access to higher education in this country. “We’re making it harder, which is the exact opposite of how it should be,” he said.
Currently, Boyce and his team are finalizing and releasing their financial packages for accepted FAFSAs. “We’re doing this in sequential order, so when a student is admitted, it is how we determine who gets their financial package first,” he said.
Financial Services still has hundreds of families who have a rejected status FAFSA. FAFSA applications can be rejected for various reasons, such as families forgetting to include an electronic signature. There are even more students with forms that are still pending to be reprocessed. “Reprocessing is what families can do nothing about. That’s something that the Department of Ed has to go through in order to correct issues that have impacted that student aid index. And that student aid index number is the ultimate identifier for how we determine what types of aid we’re going to offer,” Boyce explained. He hopes to see a future where the federal “updating of the system was thought through earlier and was better communicated.”