By Liz Willen

For many high school seniors and others hoping to attend college next year, the last few months have become a stress-filled struggle to complete the trouble-plagued, much-maligned FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

The rollout of this updated and supposedly simplified form was so delayed, error-ridden and confusing that it has derailed or severely complicated college decisions for millions of students throughout the U.S., especially those from low-income, first-generation and undocumented families.

The bureaucratic mess is also holding up decisions by private scholarship programs and adding to public skepticism about the value of higher education — threatening progress in efforts to get more Americans to and through college.

To see the impact in person, The Hechinger Report sent reporters to schools in four cities — San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore and Greenville, South Carolina — to hear students’ stories. Because we found them through schools, most of those we interviewed had counselors helping them; for the millions of students who don’t, it’s an even more daunting task.

“It was stressing me every day,” said one San Francisco senior who was accepted to 16 colleges but could not attend without substantial financial aid. Some became so frustrated they gave up, at least for now. Others said they will turn to trade schools or the military.

Students whose parents are undocumented had special worries, including concern that naming their parents would bring immigration penalties (although the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act forbids FAFSA officials from sharing family information).

Do you already have financial aid but don’t understand your offer letter?

Try our Offer Letter Decoder, which will decipher your promised financial aid.

To give students more time to weigh options, more than 200 colleges and universities pushed back their traditional May 1 commitment deadlines, some until June 1, according to the American Council on Education, which keeps an updated list.

Despite heroic efforts by counselors and a slew of public FAFSA-signing events, just 40.2 percent of high school seniors had completed the FAFSA as of May 10, in contrast to 49.6 of last year’s seniors at the same time, according to the National College Attainment Network. The numbers do not bode well for college enrollment, nor for the many high school graduates who will not get the benefits of higher education. 

No one in Damiana Beltran’s family went to college, so she didn’t picture it in her future. But at the end of her junior year, “everybody” at Mission High School in San Francisco started talking about applying, so she did. San José State University admitted her, as did a few other schools. Excited, Beltran entertained visions of becoming a psychologist and showing her younger brother that “you don’t have to be from the wealthiest family” to go to college.

But the online FAFSA form wouldn’t let Beltran, who is a U.S. citizen, submit her application because her mother, who isn’t, doesn’t have a Social Security number. They tried using her individual taxpayer identification number but got an error message. Leaving the field blank didn’t work either. Beltran’s mother skipped work to get help at the school’s Future Center, but still, no dice. Eventually, they mailed in a paper version.

When May 1 passed with no offer of aid — or even an indication that her FAFSA had been received — Beltran decided to give up on attending the schools that would require her to pay for housing and a meal plan. If she went to nearby San Francisco State University, living at home would mean not asking her mother to take on debt. “I want to go to San José, but I don’t want to do that to her,” a teary Beltran said in April. “I think about it a lot during classes. During the whole school day, it’s in the back of my head.” She’s had trouble sleeping.

Her classmate Josue Hernandez also lost sleep over the FAFSA. It took him about a month and two submission attempts to access the part of the online form that would allow him to upload his undocumented parents’ IDs to verify their identity, he said. Once he did, it took about three more weeks to process. The senior, who had received local news coverage for being accepted into 16 out of 20 schools, said he thought to himself, “It was 12 years of hard work, and I finally got in, but I might not even be able to go.”

Hernandez’s other hope was scholarships. He cut back his hours at an after-school job to work on the applications and had to stay up late into the night to do the homework he’d pushed aside. Most of his free periods, including lunches, went to figuring out how to pay for college. “It was stressing me every day,” Hernandez said.

Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

Finally, the University of California, Berkeley, told him that his FAFSA had gone through, and financial aid would pay for almost everything; the SEED Scholars Honors Program would likely take care of the rest. “It’s finally over,” he said.

But it was not over for Jocelyn, another Mission High senior, who asked to be referred to by first name only, to protect her family’s privacy. She said that her father had been working two jobs waiting tables and her mother had been saving what she could from the household budget for quite some time; they had amassed $1,000.  Jocelyn had saved $200 from working at an organic bagel shop. Room and board at San José State, her top choice too, runs $20,971 a year.

But that gap wasn’t her sole source of anxiety. By sending her undocumented parents’ names to the government in the FAFSA form, she feared she’d put them at risk, even though federal regulations forbid FAFSA officials from sharing private data with others.

Jocelyn, who wants to be a neonatal intensive care nurse, didn’t share the FAFSA difficulties with her dad, who only went to middle school in Mexico, or her mom, who never got to go to school. “They’re just gonna say, ‘Stay in San Francisco, problem solved,’ ” she said. But she already takes a class at City College of San Francisco, a community college, and finds the idea of enrolling there, with so many “grown adults,” discouraging. A friend of the family who did that and then transferred to a four-year school told Jocelyn she felt lonely having missed out on the first-year bonding. Now Jocelyn thinks she’ll go to San Francisco State, live at home for a year, and then move into an apartment. But she’d still need financial aid to make that work. “It’s like, back to square one,” Jocelyn sighed — and then said she might forgo college and get a full-time job instead.

That’s not too far from Alessandro Mejia’s plan. As a senior in the challenging Game Design Academy at Balboa High School, he has the coding skills to major in computer science at one of the four-year colleges he got into. “College is my first choice,” Mejia said in late April, but he was eyeing trade school. Financing college “would just be much harder on our family,” he said, and “being an electrician or a car mechanic doesn’t seem too bad.” Of abandoning a tech career, he said, “I’m a little frustrated, but I feel like I developed a good work ethic in school so … it’s not completely a waste.”

School counselor Katherine Valle listened to Mejia with carefully concealed horror. “It’s shocking to hear,” she said. The Game Design Academy “is our hardest pathway, and we don’t have a lot of Latino males in it. To know he did that and is going to end up being a mechanic is just …” She couldn’t find words.

Valle said that for her students whose parents have white-collar jobs, the new FAFSA was everything promised: “easier process, less questions.” But it took kids in Mejia’s family income bracket many attempts to complete. He has the same potential as his wealthier peers, but those kids are “10 steps ahead,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

Mejia finally submitted his FAFSA on April 29. He said if he didn’t hear back by the new decision deadline for California State University institutions, May 15, he wouldn’t enroll.

With less than a week to spare, Mejia learned his FAFSA had been processed. He committed to San Francisco State. Jocelyn did, too, though she would have preferred San José State. For Beltran, though, the May 15 deadline came and went; she was “still waiting for my FAFSA to come in,” she said, and hadn’t submitted an intent to register.

Samaya Acker stayed on top of her college plans all year. She applied for early action admission at 17 colleges, submitted her FAFSA application for financial aid two days after the window opened and came up with a backup plan to join the military, just in case.

Most of those preparations went well.

Acker, an 18-year-old senior at Air Force Academy High School on Chicago’s South Side who has “Power” tattooed in script on her arm, was accepted by 16 colleges (her top choice, the University of Chicago, was the only one to turn her down) and planned to spend a few months in the Air National Guard to help pay for college. But as scholarship and deposit deadlines approached, her FAFSA application was still classified as “pending” three months after she submitted it.

“It really put me on edge,” said Acker, whose high school years were interrupted first by Covid and then by the birth of her son halfway through her sophomore year, but who still is graduating with a weighted grade-point average over 4.0.

With Acker’s college decision deadlines looming, her counselor, Ashley Spencer, pulled her from class one day in mid-April to look over her options, whatever FAFSA results she got. “We are getting close to the end with you, slowly but surely,” Spencer said.

About a week later, Acker was awarded a Gates Scholarship, which pays the full cost of college attendance for high-achieving students from underrepresented groups. Acker, who is Black, accepted her offer of admission from Chicago’s Loyola University, where tuition alone is more than $52,000 per year. She plans to become an anesthesiologist. (The Gates Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

A few miles away, a group of students at Hubbard High School in southwest Chicago were not as lucky.

The FAFSA delays have created unique challenges for students with undocumented immigrant parents — including students at Hubbard. At a late-April meeting with Dulcinea Basile, the school’s college and career coach, four seniors whose parents are undocumented said they had spent months waiting for the federal government to fix a glitch that prevented parents without Social Security numbers from submitting financial information. “How many times have we logged in and it says ‘FAFSA not available’?” Basile asked rhetorically.

The glitch was finally fixed, but all four were still waiting, in early May, to find out how much financial aid they might receive.

“There’s really not much I can do,” said Javier Magana, 18, who was still trying to figure out whether he could afford any of the colleges that had accepted him. “It’s definitely been frustrating because I’ve been trying my best.”

Ixchel Ortiz, 17, plans to go to a Chicago community college, but said if she didn’t receive financial aid, even that would have to wait.

Isaac Raygoza and Octavio Rodriguez, both 18, said they had a few four-year college options but likely wouldn’t be able to pursue any of them without a FAFSA answer.

Rodriguez said he had been repeatedly frustrated by trying to complete the FAFSA. “I would go home and wait 20 to 30 minutes on hold, and we didn’t get anywhere,” he said. In late April he was notified that he had misspelled his own name on the application; in mid-May, he was still waiting to hear whether he needed to re-apply from scratch.

“I’m slightly stressed,” he said in mid-May.

Raygoza said he had submitted his application on time but had failed to notice an error message that prevented it from being processed. He resubmitted it in late April.

“I was just shocked it was never processed,” he said. “I had to do it all again.”

All four said they would likely take a year off to work if they didn’t get aid.

At the Academy for College and Career Exploration in Baltimore, juniors and seniors have weekly class, run by the nonprofit organization iMentor, to help them understand and pursue postsecondary options, including colleges and various types of financial aid. Counselor LaToia Lyle worries about the long delays with FAFSA, because most of her students are low-income and will be first-generation college students, so they don’t always have someone to help them at home, and the delays could mean decisions had to be made quickly.

She helps them compare tuition costs and reminds them that housing deposits are not refundable and book fees add up. “Even gaps as small as $500 can make a difference,” she said.

For Zion Wilson and Camryn Carter, both seniors, the delays and the need to constantly try to log into FAFSA accounts that froze were frustrating, but both students said they were relieved when glitches with the forms meant their college commitment deadlines got pushed back.

“The last thing I wanted to do was make a fast-paced decision,” said Wilson, an ebullient 17-year-old with a wide smile. “I kept bouncing between different things. I felt the FAFSA delay gave me more of a chance to decide what I actually wanted to do.”

She had applied for computer science programs at several colleges but was nervous about taking out loans. Even though Baltimore City Community College would be tuition-free for her, she worried she wouldn’t have enough money to spend if she wasn’t working. But her family wanted her to go to college, especially because her elder sister had enrolled but dropped out after the first year.

Wilson was admitted to her top three choices — BCCC, University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Coppin State University — but even with scholarships, she decided not to go. Instead, Wilson plans to go straight into the workforce through a program called Grads2Careers, where she will get training in information technology.

“It kind of sounded like I can just do the exact same thing that I would be doing if I went to college, but I can just start now versus waiting two years to start,” Wilson said. After a two-week training period, she will be paid between $15 and $17 an hour, she said.

In the end, she filled out her portion of the FAFSA, but told her parents not to do theirs. “Why make my parents do this long thing and put in their tax information, if I’m not going anywhere that requires it?”

Wilson is relieved not to have to think about college anymore. “I think I made the right choice, and having some money in my pocket will also be a good push for me to continue to advance up.”

Her classmate Carter, 18, is a serious student who is also on the baseball, wrestling and track teams. He has never wavered from his childhood decision to study biology. It began, he said, when he was about four years old, and his grandmother tuned to the National Geographic channel on TV.

“I was like, ‘stop, stop, stop,’ ” he said, recalling the video of a lion attacking a zebra. Carter was hooked. He started watching the channel every day. “I fell in love with ants, ecosystems, that just sparked my interest in biology.”

Carter applied to 14 colleges. He said filling out all the forms was challenging because the delayed release of the FAFSA meant he was doing it at the same time as he was taking a demanding course load, including AP Literature and AP Calculus. “It was really time-consuming and really work-heavy with a lot of essays, a lot of homework,” he said. “It’s pretty tough to do that at the same time while I’m doing college supplemental essays and my personal statement.”

But the FAFSA delay also meant that his mother had more time to finish the form, something she had been putting off for months. Because he is the oldest of four children, his mom hadn’t had to complete a form like this that asks for a lot of personal information, including tax data, he said.

“My mom was just brushing over it,” he said. “But I was like, ‘No, you really have to do this because this is for my future. Like, you don’t do this, I’ll have so much debt.’ So I was just telling her to please do this and please get on it.”

She did, but Carter said it likely wouldn’t have happened without the delay.

Carter got into his dream school, the University of Maryland, College Park, with a full scholarship, including tuition, meals and accommodation. His second choice, McDaniel College, also offered him a generous scholarship, but he says he still would have ended up paying $6,000 a year, which he didn’t want to do. “Definitely money was a big factor,” he said. He said he’s excited about starting a new chapter in September: “I feel like UMD is the perfect fit for me.”

Chylicia and Chy’Kyla Henderson worked hard to graduate early from Eastside High School in Greenville, South Carolina. The sisters filled their schedules and took virtual classes as well, so that Chylicia, now 18, could be done with school a semester early and Chy’Kyla, 17, could graduate after her junior year. Both want to attend college but need financial aid to afford it.

Their mom, Nichole Henderson, said the stress of trying to fill out both their FAFSA forms at once led her to take her daughters and two other graduating seniors she knew to a FAFSA workshop at a local college in April. Even with help from someone there, she found the forms confusing — Chylicia’s asked for Nichole’s tax information, she said, but Chy’Kyla’s did not.

“I don’t think there was a lot of help surrounding the whole FAFSA process,” Nichole said. “As a parent, it’s stressful. Especially when you have two.”

Chylicia is thinking about pursuing a degree in nursing or social work, and leaning toward starting at Greenville Technical College, a community college. But the school emailed her saying they needed more information on her financial aid application; it wasn’t clear if the issue stemmed from the FAFSA form or something else, she said.

Then, on May 8, she got an email from South Carolina Tuition Grants, a program that provides up to $4,800 in need-based scholarships, saying she was tentatively approved for the full amount. She still hasn’t resolved the paperwork issue at Greenville Technical College, though, and so isn’t sure yet whether she’ll be able to enroll there.

And if Chylicia’s application is missing information, the family worries that Chy’Kyla’s will have the same issue. Like her sister, she’s considering starting out at a community college, but Chy’Kyla also applied to a handful of schools in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. By May 8, she said, she hadn’t received word about financial aid from any schools or any need-based scholarship programs.

“We’re just playing the waiting game,” their mother said.

Heather Williams, a school counselor at Riverside High School in Greenville, said students told her they struggled simply to complete and correct errors in their forms.

“Some of the errors they’ve had were just missing a signature,” Williams said. “Trying to circumvent that and fix it was hard for students because you can make corrections, but it was hard to get back in and [do it]. It was a lot of, ‘If I click this, then what?’ And being aware there’s an error, but not sure how to fix it.”

The FAFSA process has always been complicated, but the truncated timeline this year made it significantly more stressful, said Nicole Snow, a school counselor at J.L. Mann High School, also in Greenville County. Normally, her students and their families start filling out their FAFSA forms in the fall, but this year, they couldn’t access the form until January.

“By January and February, we’ve almost kind of lost those seniors that have already done their [college] applications,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, let’s pull you back three months later and open up FAFSA.’”

The delay created some challenging decisions for students like Braden Freeman. Freeman, who is the student body president at J.L. Mann, submitted his financial aid application in January, right after it opened up. In March, he was told he got a full scholarship to attend Southern Methodist University in Texas, but by May 1, he still hadn’t heard back from his other top choices — the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia — on how much need-based and merit-based aid he would get. Those colleges had pushed back their decision deadlines because of FAFSA delays.

Instead of waiting to hear back from UNC and UVA, Freeman decided to put a deposit down at Southern Methodist, whose deadline was May 1. The full scholarship was a big factor in his decision. “With the rising cost of tuition, I just can’t take on that much alone,” he said.

Both UNC and UVA eventually sent Freeman his financial aid packages a week before their deadline to enroll, which was May 15. Freeman said he still planned to attend Southern Methodist.

“I’m fortunate enough to not be incredibly dependent on need-based aid,” Freeman said. “For kids that are waiting on that and don’t know, I can imagine that would be way worse.”

This story about FAFSA applications was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Four cities of FAFSA chaos: Students tell how they grappled with the mess, stress appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid promised to be an easy process for all students, especially those from immigrant families. For the first time, students with undocumented parents were told, they would be able to complete this form online.

We should have known better. Students with undocumented parents are constantly getting error messages from the FAFSA portal and are struggling to create FAFSA IDs for their parents who don’t have Social Security numbers. When they contact the FAFSA helpline, they hear “It’s a glitch. Try at a different time. Try a different browser.”

As I have seen as a college adviser, the online process has only worked for a few of my qualifying students. Others were asked to send their parents’ documents for verification.

Many of these students are still waiting for approval and have been unable to complete their FAFSA forms. Delays in their FAFSA applications could mean delays in receiving financial aid packages and possibly mean getting less financial aid to cover the costs of college. Their FAFSA applications now echo the immigration policies in this country — forever in limbo, mired in legislative and bureaucratic delays.

It wouldn’t surprise me if those students’ documents were among the FAFSA program’s thousands of unread emails, indicative of its widespread failure.

Related: ‘Simpler’ FAFSA complicates college plans for students, families

This isn’t the only roadblock my students face while attempting to pursue a college education. And it just underscores their need for help from someone familiar with the system and the frustration it brings.

Sadly, there aren’t enough college advisers like me for the growing population of immigrant students in New York City. We need to earmark funds to hire more advisers because no matter how much we prepare students in high school to succeed academically at the next level, they also need someone trained in the intersection of immigration and education to get them there.

For nearly a decade, the New York State Youth Leadership Council (YLC) and Teach Dream, the council’s educator team, have pushed city officials for more support for immigrant students in schools.

Finally, in 2021, they launched the Immigrant Liaison pilot program in a collaborative project with CUNY’s Initiative on Immigration and Education. That program led to the creation of positions for school staff members with experience working with and supporting immigrant youth, undocumented students, their families and caregivers.

The pilot began with three New York City public high schools, including the one where I work; in its second year, it added two middle schools. But funds for the program ended last June, leaving many of us doing this work informally.

Two decades ago, I was an undocumented student in high school and was unable to complete the FAFSA because of my status. I did some research to try to find out if I would be eligible for academic scholarships. I made several inquiries to tri-state college admissions counselors.

Like many of my students, I wanted to be the first in my family to earn a college degree, but my research results were discouraging.

I’ll never forget one response: An admissions counselor said I would have to contact the office for “special education accommodation” — as if immigration were a disability.

Federal and state immigration policies have since changed, and options have multiplied for immigrant students. In 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, began to allow eligible immigrants like myself to obtain work permits and Social Security numbers.

In 2016, New York State changed its licensing rules, allowing DACA recipients like me to earn professional certifications in teaching, and I was able to continue my career as a math teacher in the Department of Education. And in 2019, the New York State Senate passed the José Peralta New York State DREAM Act, which gave undocumented students in New York State the ability to qualify for state aid for higher education.

Yet even with all these changes, undocumented immigrants in New York State make up less than 2 percent of the students enrolled in higher education despite the fact that undocumented immigrants comprise roughly 14 percent of the state’s overall population.

How many more could go to college if they had someone in their high school who could properly guide them through the college application process?

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

At schools across the country, at all grade levels, not enough counselors and staff are equipped to navigate the intricacies of the complex and often confusing immigration system.

We need state or city-funded immigrant liaisons at every school. Securing funding will be like working with FAFSA: We will need to be persistent and patient.

It’s worth it. This winter, I walked a student through the steps on how to create her mother’s FAFSA ID. The mother then tried multiple times for a month until she was successful in creating it.

After that, my student completed her FAFSA form in 10 minutes. Now, we are waiting to hear whether she gets financial aid to attend college.

My work as an immigrant liaison is never finished. I only wish more could join me.

Juan Carlos Pérez is a project researcher for the CUNY Initiative on Immigration & Education and a college adviser at an international high school in New York City.

This story about immigrant students and FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: Immigrant students need trained advisers to navigate the problematic college admissions process appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Applying to college has never been more confusing.

The new version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which was meant to be less complicated for students, is instead a glitchy mess. The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action has left high schoolers and their counselors unsure of what can and can’t be said in applications. College admissions officers fear lawsuits, and in many cases are struggling to balance their institution’s stated commitments to diversity with the realities of this new legal landscape.

Meanwhile, there’s a push to admit students who’ve overcome adversity and who demonstrate “grit,” or persistence through challenging circumstances. But we lack a shared understanding of what adversity means. At the same time, students feel pressured to open up about a momentous challenge or life obstacle they have had to overcome; essay prompts from the Common App help fuel such narratives and place an unnecessary burden on students.

What’s more, high-quality data on students’ high schools and home environments, which could help admissions officers contextualize students’ applications and better understand what challenges they’ve overcome, remains lacking. And admissions officers risk allowing their own biases to cloud how they evaluate students.

All of this is to say we’ve reached a breaking point. Policymakers and higher ed institutions must try harder. Here are a few starting points: 

More effective communication on the FAFSA. Many families are still unsure of how to navigate the federal aid process. In response, both colleges and the federal government must better explain what changes have been made and offer step-by-step guidance; this can be done through webinars, easy-to-read pamphlets, and other direct and accessible channels.

Increase opportunities for meaningful communication between admissions officers and school counselors. There is too little clarity on what colleges would like to see reflected in non-academic parts of an application – even more so now that a student’s race may not be considered. Before we embark on another admissions cycle, there must be greater dialogue between colleges and high schools on how to best support college-going students. For instance, counselors would benefit from local Q&A forums with admissions officers, providing an overview of what a strong application might look like and where counselors should direct their limited resources.

Standardize the use of recommendation letter templates. Officers must sift through huge numbers of applications while counselors often juggle hundreds of students on their caseload. One way to improve this is by streamlining the process for writing letters of recommendation:  States, for example, could partner with a team of higher ed professionals to build a standardized template. Not only would this save counselors time guessing what sort of content admissions officers will find most relevant, but it would spare college employees from reading letters of varying quality and formats.

Mandate implicit bias training for admissions officers and that they more equitably allocate their resources. While having contextual data about students and their backgrounds is a necessary first step, how that information is used to evaluate students is just as crucial: Officers’ personal views on what a strong student profile looks like could distort the evaluation process and lead to some students being overlooked. Admissions offices also must take a hard look at their current recruiting practices and invest more time and money into recruiting at high-poverty schools.

Ensuring that higher education is open to all students has never been more important. With urgency to innovate and vast tools at our disposal, I believe that we have the potential to open doors for students who might in the past have felt a college degree was unattainable. Rather than succumb to this culture of confusion, we must challenge our colleagues in K-12 and higher education to build a culture of clarity and newfound connection.

Matthew Nicola is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, completing his Ed.M. in the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship (ELOE) program. The intersection of college admissions, counseling, and equity was the focus of an independent study he conducted through the School Counseling Research Lab.

This op-ed about college admissions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: The glitchy FAFSA is only one problem with getting into college. Here’s how to make the process less confusing appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For far too many students, the joy of getting into college this year is clouded by the uncertainty of not knowing what it will cost. That’s the result of a crisis in the financial aid system that is the lifeblood of college access for millions of Americans.

We can and must give these students more time to gather financial aid offers, weigh their options and make good decisions.

The root of the trouble is a glitch-plagued revision to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The rocky rollout of the new FAFSA has caused extraordinary delays this year in transmission of essential financial data from the federal government to colleges and universities.

As a result, many college applicants are receiving offers of admission without knowing how much grant aid they would receive if they enroll, along with the size of loans they might need to cover tuition and other bills.

Related: The Fafsa fiasco could roll back years of progress it must be fixed immediately

Meanwhile, the traditional college decision date looms: May 1. That is barely five weeks away. That’s why the American Council on Education and other higher education groups are urging colleges to extend their deadlines.

For the past half century, May 1 has been the consensus make-up-your-mind moment for students admitted to selective colleges and universities. By that date, they must place a deposit to secure their spot in a class. 

There are good reasons for a deadline. It focuses the minds of those pondering multiple offers who might keep waffling without a fixed date to force a decision. It accelerates the sifting and sorting that occurs as colleges turn to wait lists to meet enrollment targets.

The deadline enables the start of housing assignments and planning for orientation and other summer programs and helps nudge admitted students to give one more look to colleges that struggle to fill seats.

May 1, in short, is a crucial turning point as colleges wrap up one school year and prepare for another.

But that date is not set in stone. Four years ago, hundreds of colleges eased their enrollment-commitment deadlines in response to the coronavirus pandemic and widespread economic and social upheaval. And in general, May 1 is much less relevant, or not relevant at all, to colleges that have rolling or open admissions.

It is heartening that many selective schools did decide to push back deadlines after the Education Department warned in late January that FAFSA information will arrive well behind schedule. Some data has begun to flow, but the effects of the backlog are continuing and profound.

ACE counts well over 175 deadline extenders, and the total is rising. They include DePaul University, one of the nation’s largest Catholic institutions; North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black institution; the University of California and California State University systems; the universities of Georgia and Florida; and most members of the Big Ten.

They also include liberal arts schools such as Wesleyan University and Agnes Scott, Amherst, Kalamazoo, Lewis & Clark and Williams colleges.

Approaches vary. Some schools are pushing back to May 15, others to June 1. Some are extending deadlines only for in-state students. Some ask for deposits by May 1 but allow refunds until June 1. All are demonstrating admirable solidarity with students in financial need.

It is not too late for others to join them.

Highlighting the complexity of the situation, many colleges face financial and competitive pressures to meet enrollment targets and cite those reasons for maintaining deadlines. Their arguments cannot be lightly dismissed.

Also, more than 100 well-resourced colleges and universities have developed timely financial aid offers using information from the College Board’s CSS Profile questionnaire. That gives those schools an edge over others that rely only on FAFSA.

But applicants often secure admission to both kinds of schools – those that use CSS Profile and those that don’t. These students might face decision-making quandaries if some financial aid offers arrive much later than others.

Some CSS Profile users, including the University of Virginia, William & Mary and Georgia Tech, have extended deadlines. Most have not.

Those holdouts would have a powerful impact and, quite possibly, could help alleviate the crisis with even modest deadline extensions. Even if schools leave deadlines unchanged, it would be extremely helpful for them to acknowledge the FAFSA crisis and give clear public assurances that they will make exceptions for students who need more time.

Many higher education problems defy simple solutions. To raise graduation rates, for example, or to contain costs and lower student debt, requires sustained effort on many fronts and the will to innovate.

But this crisis is different. Colleges should do their best to give families breathing room to make good choices.

At a time of dwindling public confidence in higher education, pushing back a few deadlines to help students in need is the least we can do. And it just might help restore a bit of that lost confidence.

Nick Anderson is vice president for higher education partnerships and improvement at the American Council on Education. Previously, he covered higher education for The Washington Post. 

This op-ed about the FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: There’s a temporary fix to the FAFSA mess — all colleges must extend decision deadlines appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, calamity of 2024 is being recognized and felt by students, families and schools. Without a collective will toward remedy and high-order national attention, this calamity will carry forward for several years.

Amidst unprecedented delays and a bungled rollout of the revised FAFSA process and form, it’s now time to turn our attention toward a pathway for reestablishing positive momentum and helping students immediately access and fill out the FAFSA.

The social contract which holds that our government will “first, do no harm” has been broken. Upcoming enrollment data will likely tell the story of what I call “education-access deaths,” which I believe will be suffered by 3 million to 7 million students in total. Other experts say we could see more than 2.8 million fewer FAFSAs submitted this year; and, in the number of first-year applicants alone, a decline of 30 percent from last year.  

It appears that, because FAFSA worked so reliably for so long — even though it was a pain to fill out the form — senior political leadership at the Department of Education took it for granted that the 2024 FAFSA rollout would also work. Well, sadly, we all now know that it required more careful attention.

In order to reestablish trust in our country’s commitment to meeting the financial needs of students who seek college and postsecondary skills, we must now establish what I call a “New FAFSA Contract for America” that reaffirms our government’s duty to deliver student aid eligibility information and funding allowability promises.  

This New FAFSA Contract would be clearly articulated in writing and signed by every high-level official at the Department of Education, leading with the secretary of education’s commitment and support. Every single person at the Office of Federal Student Aid should be required to acknowledge the New FAFSA Contract annually and also be required to submit a test FAFSA application each year.

Related: COLUMN: The FAFSA fiasco could roll back years of progress. It must be fixed immediately

In order to make a “down payment” on this New FAFSA Contract, and to mitigate to some degree the damage caused by the FAFSA calamity of 2024, I propose that the Department of Education immediately undertake an effort to make large “block grants” available to community colleges, Title IV eligible trade and vocational schools, HBCUs and tribal colleges and other defined minority-serving institutions that enroll less than 750 students per year. This would cover a significant number of schools that enroll the vast majority of Pell Grant-dependent students.

Allocation of these block grant funds to individual students would be at the discretion of college financial aid officers and be considered as grants, not loan advances, intended for Pell-eligible students.

Starting June 1 of this year, our government must allocate no less than $150 million per year to nonprofit organizations to support sending out the message of why FAFSA is important and how to complete FAFSA applications — and to restore FAFSA’s brand reputation. The funds should be awarded based upon Department of Education competitively solicited cooperative agreement grants.

In addition to the FAFSA messaging grants described above, the government should provide every high school in America with a $25 incentive for each FAFSA successfully completed.

It should be noted that we have successfully increased FAFSA completion rates before. During my time at the Office of Federal Student Aid, we launched a “But First, FAFSA” digital communications campaign using Facebook and other channels. It proved to be very effective.

A relaunched “But First, FAFSA” campaign must be continuous and baked into future operating budgets, and not be an ad-hoc expenditure. Funding for this communications effort should be at the same level as that which was used to reestablish trust in President Barack Obama’s healthcare open enrollment after its initial failure in 2013.

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

Also, Undersecretary James Kvaal must immediately put out a call for experienced and willing federal financial aid professionals, past and current, to come forward; they must be welcomed and allowed to provide assistance with both fixing FAFSA and supporting communications regarding FAFSA.

President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona should establish a five-person nonpartisan board, comprised of experienced financial services and higher education business office executives, to provide oversight of the office of Federal Student Aid, or FSA, and reinforce its nonpolitical status and authority as a designated Performance-Based Organization. This board would make sure that FSA’s mission — enabling student financial aid — is honored along with the new FAFSA contract.

A highly experienced large-scale financial services systems and operations executive should replace the current chief operating officer. FSA is in the services business, and this should always be recognized and supported by its leadership as being front and center.

We must start now to take action to cause FAFSA to once again be operationally sound, trusted and appreciated. If we do not collectively commit, then that which cannot be calculated or even estimated is the degree of harm that will occur because students could not access needed funds that are governed by, and enabled only through, the FAFSA gateway.

A. Wayne Johnson is currently a candidate for the U.S. Congress in Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District and the former chief operating officer and chief strategy and transformation officer for the office of Federal Student Aid.

This story about the new FAFSA process and the FSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: FAFSA is in deep trouble; all stakeholders must take steps to fix it right away appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Amid the excitement and anticipation that typically accompany the approach of graduation day there hangs a disheartening reality at our high schools this year: many students won’t have the clarity of knowing where their future lies before they walk across the graduation stage.

The delay in processing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms has cast an unexpected shadow over their aspirations, particularly for those who are the first in their families to pursue higher education.

The resulting uncertainty is striking hardest at the hearts of our first-generation and socioeconomically disadvantaged students – especially those with undocumented parents – for whom the prospect of college is not just a personal triumph, but often a generational milestone.

The new “better” FAFSA introduced this year was in fact worse for most students because of system glitches and was particularly troublesome for any student with a parent who does not have a social security number.

Our students in this situation will likely not know their federal financial aid packages until after many private college decision deadlines.  The predicament disproportionately burdens students who are already navigating a labyrinthine college application process, often without essential support systems available to their more affluent peers.

We applaud the University of California, California State University, and other public institutions nationwide for extending their deadlines to accommodate these delays. We also applaud those private universities that have followed suit. But there remain many private universities that have not.

Students from low-income backgrounds are only about half as likely to enroll and complete college by age 26, according to the National College Attainment Network. This disparity is further amplified for students with undocumented parents, who may face invisible challenges due to limited finances, fear of deportation for themselves or their families, and a general sense of uncertainty about their place in the educational landscape.

The additional stress of uncertain financial aid deadlines only compounds such challenges, adding another layer of difficulty and potentially dissuading them from pursuing their educational ambitions.

This issue arises at a critical juncture in higher education. Universities across the nation are seeking to diversify their student bodies and attract more first-generation students. Creating a more equitable playing field for all students is paramount in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action.

The current FAFSA delay throws a wrench into these efforts.

The schools we head in the San Francisco Bay Area, Alpha Public Schools and Cristo Rey San José, collectively serve 198 high school seniors, the majority of whom will be first-generation college students – including a significant portion with undocumented parents.

Their journey is already fraught with obstacles. They already navigate complex application processes, deal with financial constraints, and often lack the familial support that many of their peers take for granted.  FAFSA delays have thrust additional hurdles upon our students.

We need additional collective action on the part of more colleges, demonstrating a commitment to equitable educational access while shielding students from the repercussions of administrative inefficiencies beyond their control.

We also urge fellow organizations and institutions to unite in advocating for a long-term solution on a national scale.

Let us stand together in defense of the dreams and aspirations of our nation’s youth regardless of their background or the federal government’s administrative shortcomings.

Together, we can ensure that the door to higher education remains open for all students.

Shara Hegde is the CEO of Alpha Public Schools, a network of charter schools in San Jose, CA.

Silvia Scandar Mahan is the president and CEO of Cristo Rey San José Jesuit High School and Corporate Work Study Program.

This story about FAFSA and disadvantaged students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: We fear our students will be shut out of college due to FAFSA failures appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The federal government’s financial aid application, known as the FAFSA, has been plagued with problems since its new version launched December 30, three months late. This is a major problem for the more than 70 percent of undergraduates who rely on some type of financial aid to pay for their education, because they’ll have less time than ever to make a decision about one of the biggest expenses of their lives.

What can parents do? The best first step is one that’s often the hardest for parents: Start a conversation about what you can afford. Research has shown that middle-class families rarely discuss the trade-offs and uncertainties related to paying for college, even though an honest conversation may prevent future financial headaches and relational heartache. The biggest reason? Parents may not want to burden their children with financial worries.

As a researcher at uAspire, a nonprofit that tries to help students learn about and access financial aid, I find that concerning. But I know how hard these discussions can be.

My own family didn’t talk about how we’d pay for college more than 25 years ago. I remember when the promissory notes arrived at my house, on green postcards, written in a tiny font size. I didn’t ask a single person what they meant, and no one in my family explained them to me — I just signed and mailed them back. Loans appeared to offer a bridge from my high school reality to an independent, adult life far from home. What I didn’t realize is how many of my future choices would be limited for the next 21 years, until those loans were finally paid off. Making room in my postcollege budget for loan payments affected where I could afford to live, how many hours I had to work, how often I could eat out, whether I could afford to travel to a friend’s wedding and whether I could donate to charities, among other choices.

Related: ‘Simpler’ FAFSA complicates college plans for students, families

Of course, the amount of financial damage I could do to myself back then was more limited than it would be now. Tuition charges alone have more than tripled at my alma mater, Northwestern University, since I was a student, rising from less than $20,000 a year in 1998 to nearly $65,000 this past fall.

To muster the bravery for a financial talk, it may help parents to know that this process is complicated for every family. The FAFSA — the first step in a lengthy process to unlock grants, loans, work-study and other forms of financial aid — has been imperfect since its inception in 1992. This new version promises to be simpler and award Pell Grants to over 600,000 more students from low-income families — major policy wins. Yet families largely have not found FAFSA to be simpler. It’s improving, but the growing pains are being felt by students and parents everywhere.

That’s why it is so imperative for families to talk now, while there is still time to listen, share and make a plan, before placing a deposit somewhere.

Once you do start talking, the conversation with your child should cover a few things: What can our family afford to pay up front to start college? What sources — savings, or a part-time job, for example — can your child rely on for day-to-day expenses during college? And what can they comfortably pay back later based on their expected employment earnings?

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

There are other things you can do, too. First, complete the FAFSA as soon as possible. Second, review the financial aid offers once they arrive — even though they will likely arrive later than usual this year — and make sure you understand the different types of aid being offered.

My organization offers a free tool — a college cost calculator — to compare notoriously confusing aid offers. Since fewer than half of the students who begin a bachelor’s degree will graduate within four years, choose an institution with the most sustainable financing plan, one you could manage for up to six years. Browse government websites like Federal Student Aid and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or industry sites like NerdWallet, to learn about the pros and cons of different types of education loans before accepting any. The Institute of Student Loan Advisors can offer advice if you have questions about loan repayment, including forgiveness and consolidation. Appeal your aid offer if your financial situation has changed dramatically since what was captured by your 2022 tax return; resources on the SwiftStudent website can help you get started.

Of course, these are all individual actions to mitigate the effects of our broken system. Until there’s true change in how we pay for college, students and their families must be vigilant and proactive — starting now.

Jonathan Lewis is the senior director of research at uAspire, a nonprofit group that works to ensure students have the necessary financial information and resources to complete college.

This story about parents and FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: With financial aid processes more broken than ever, here’s what families can do appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

As of today, we are over 30 percent behind last year in FAFSA filings. If we do not mobilize as a college access community, we are at risk of losing thousands of students from the pipeline to higher education.

The culprit? The difficult revised FAFSA process. Many public school counselors have told me that their students are frustrated and waiting until next year to apply.

News coverage of the disastrous new FAFSA rollout and the Education Department’s unprecedented delays in sending FAFSA data to institutions has detailed everything that went wrong. What hasn’t been covered is the potential impact this could have on the nation, what we can do to mitigate some of the unintended consequences or what we all must do right now to help.

There is no time to waste. We need a national movement to get students in the pipeline to higher education. Every single person reading this article should share this link that details state-by-state workshops, events and tools to help students complete their FAFSA.

Share this resource with places of worship and local community centers, at school board meetings and beyond. If you engage with a high school senior on the bus, on the metro or elsewhere in your local community, ask them, “Have you filled out your FAFSA yet?”

Related: COLUMN: The FAFSA fiasco could roll back years of progress. It must be fixed immediately

We know students who complete the FAFSA are more likely to continue their education. We need them to complete their FAFSA and matriculate now, before they’re out of reach.

During the height of COVID, we lost over a million students from the pipeline to higher education. This is on top of our already declining high school-age population. Losing more students will mean we’ll have a significant shortfall in the number of young adults with degrees.

This has serious implications for the future workforce, economic mobility for individuals, economic stability for communities and America’s ability to compete on a global stage.

This also has serious implications for institutions of higher education. Many colleges depend on the revenue students bring with them. When the college enrollment population declines, college revenues decline.

A small, rural college president told me recently that the FAFSA debacle has the potential to put their school out of business. If the school loses even just a few students, they won’t make payroll.

We simply can’t afford to lose more students. School counselors can’t do this work alone. We need your help.

We need a coalition of FAFSA champions committed to helping us close the gap in application filings. Better yet, if you are a college access professional, host your own FAFSA workshop and invite students and families from your local community.

And we need to move quickly. The new FAFSA process is creating delays in financial aid offers even for students who have already completed the form, and most schools’ decision deadlines are looming. Many colleges, however, want to help relieve the anxiety students and families are feeling and are willing to extend deadlines. Our National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) directory lists institutions that have moved their enrollment decision deadlines.

Students need as much support and flexibility as possible right now, and shifted deadlines give them some breathing room to weigh their options — this is the largest financial decision of their young lives. While we have several hundred schools on our list, students and families need more schools to extend their deadlines.

Giving students the time and space to make the best decision for themselves is not only the right move ethically, but also a consumer protection issue.

We wouldn’t commit to buying a home without knowing the full price, so we shouldn’t require or expect students to commit to a college without knowing what they will have to pay.

I also know that our school counseling and advising community has been significantly impacted by the FAFSA rollout. Our counselors are exhausted, confused and frustrated.

They feel powerless and want to do everything they can to help their students. Many of them realize that they are going to have to work through the summer to help their students complete the process, but due to the politics of contract negotiations, many of them won’t be able to work into the summer to support their students.

I recently sent a letter to the Secretary of Education calling on him to remind federal grantees of allowable uses of federal funds that support college-going. Our school counselors and advisers cannot be expected to work for free, and we need them now more than ever.

Let’s shine a light on this issue by sharing our support for school counselor contract extensions with our school principals, superintendents, district leaders and boards.

Without the expertise of our counseling community, students could make bad decisions.

Related: OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough

Finally, extending grace to each other is one of the most important actions we can take.

I have found that in crisis, our college access community tends to turn on each other. The anger is understandable, but we need to channel that energy toward creative, action-oriented solutions.

If we don’t work together, our students lose. Let’s give grace to colleges whose financial aid awards are late this year, to counselors who may make mistakes as they navigate an unprecedented process and to students who may be delayed in getting their information where it needs to go.

The future of our nation is at risk, so let’s work collaboratively with strategy, intention and grace as we steer our young people toward their best future.

Angel B. Pérez is the CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and represents over 27,000 admission and counseling professionals worldwide committed to postsecondary access and success.

This story about the new FAFSA process was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: School counselors can’t undo the FAFSA mess on their own. We need a national movement right now appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

I participated in an online completion event recently with the aim of supporting students with the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) form so I could gain new insights for the counselors I work with at New Visions for Public Schools.

As someone who’s been a college access professional for nearly a quarter century, it was eye-opening.

I was painfully aware that the new, “Better FAFSA” launch has been a nightmare, even though Congress passed the law that created it with the intent of making the process of completing the FAFSA form simpler for students and families and of increasing access to federal aid like the Pell Grant. Instead, the so-called Better FAFSA has been riddled with known issues, including many that have unfairly affected our most vulnerable students — specifically those whose parents do not have a Social Security number (SSN).

Now, parents without SSNs are required to obtain an FSA ID in order to sign into their child’s FAFSA. Then they must provide permission for FAFSA systems to obtain their tax information from the IRS. In short, it hasn’t been working, and many parents have been shut out of completing their part of the FAFSA.

Related: ‘Simpler’ FAFSA complicates college plans for students, families

They’re not the only ones. Many other parents and students have also been struggling to submit their information. Students who are permanent residents, for example, have struggled to enter their information on the form after entering their green card number.

When I agreed to participate in this free online completion event, I expected more success. Although it was 3.5 hours long, I only managed to work with four families. And I was able to complete the FAFSA with only one of them, even with all my years of experience supporting students and guiding counselors through some of the most difficult financial aid scenarios and even though I was familiar with the latest updates and challenges. None of that was enough to enable me to guide more families through to completion within the three-plus hours of the event.

As discouraged as I was, I remembered that counseling, especially around financial aid, is primarily about relationships. I made sure to spend a few minutes chatting with the students and parents to put them at ease.

I affirmed the hard work they had put into the form, especially for those who had been dealing with these complications for over a month.

I even offered a little guidance around finding a good fit for college.

But if I struggled with the new form, with all my advantages, how can we possibly expect families to complete the new FAFSA on their own?

The support that counselors and other college access professionals provide will continue to be essential in keeping students engaged and motivated to pursue their postsecondary goals during this FAFSA upheaval. This work must move forward.

Here’s a bit of advice for anyone trying to help.

Those of us who do this work can learn from one another. For example, a number of my colleagues in New York City have started an email FAFSA support group in which we share updates, screenshots and other information.

In addition, social media is full of groups hashing out FAFSA concerns, while professional organizations like the National College Attainment Network, or NCAN, have been diligently updating their FAFSA tool kits.

We can also remind students — and help them with — other forms that need to be completed, like the CSS Profile and verification forms. In short, we need to make sure that students are doing everything they can to access financial aid.

In the meantime, students who have successfully submitted the FAFSA must know that it will take weeks for their form to be processed. They will have to check their email regularly to keep track of their application and any financial aid-related requests from colleges.

It is likely that financial aid packages will not be available until April or May (schools that require the CSS Profile will be able to provide financial aid packages sooner). This dynamic disproportionately affects our lowest-income students. These students need time to compare several financial aid packages, and they should be reminded of this.

Many colleges haven’t yet extended their enrollment deadlines. That means that advocacy by students and those who work with them will be even more important to ensure they get the time needed to make these important decisions.

Related: OPINION: It’s time to stop using the FAFSA to determine who gets emergency aid

These FAFSA changes are difficult, but they must not defeat students and their families. Together we can help them succeed with the kind of hard work, information-sharing and mutual support I’ve witnessed among the counselors I work with.

I hope we can come out on the other side and be well-prepared to continue the good fight.

 Sandy Jimenez is postsecondary pathways resource manager at New Visions for Public Schools and a co-author of the “Understanding FAFSA Guide.”

This story about the new FAFSA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: I’m a college access professional. I had no idea filling out the new FAFSA would be so tough appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Here’s an idea worth pursuing: Make every U.S. high school student complete a FAFSA before graduating, to move more students toward college.

Here are two more: Hire more school counselors, and simplify the forms for federal aid.

As part of a larger movement to bring college-admissions requirements to students, rather than making students seek them out, three states — Illinois, Louisiana and Texas  — have adopted laws requiring students to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Others are considering similar measures, and the time for a national measure has come, even though challenges remain.

The need for young people to receive some kind of postsecondary education is more important than ever, as a greater percentage of occupations require some advanced education. It’s critical that the FAFSA be accessible, to help students pay for postsecondary education. Ninety percent of FAFSA completers enroll in college, compared with 55 percent of non-completers.

Related: One surprising barrier to college success: Dense higher education lingo

Even if students don’t enroll right away, they will be armed with the knowledge that funds exist to help them pay for higher education.

Louisiana offers a compelling test case. Before becoming the first state to make completing the FAFSA mandatory in the 2017-18 school year, its completion rate was just 50 percent, below the then-national average of 55 percent. Since making the change, Louisiana now leads all states in the FAFSA completion rate, at 82.6 percent.

School districts like the 7,800-student Santa Maria Joint High School District in California are considering a similar measure. The district says it isn’t seeing enough students attend college. Approximately 30 to 40 percent of its students don’t complete the FAFSA, according to school board member Diana Perez. The school is modeling its proposal on Louisiana. California, Indiana, Michigan, Indiana and the District of Columbia are considering similar policies. Kudos to these states and locales for taking the initiative.

It’s important to note, though, that the road to a national plan isn’t all smooth sailing.

For instance, some common myths hurt voluntary FAFSA completion: “college is too expensive for me,” or “only students with good grades get financial aid.” There’s also the real problem that those students who could benefit the most from filling out the FAFSA often find it the most difficult to complete. Making it mandatory provides the kind of nudge that students need to overcome these perceived and real barriers.

It’s also important that students be given the support they need to complete their forms successfully and accurately, and that they feel safe doing so, to ensure that this requirement accomplishes its original goal: increasing access to college.

Asking families to shoulder this requirement alone is not the solution, as this task may be more difficult for families who most need federal aid. Students may be at sea when completing the FAFSA if they need documents from multiple employers or institutions, if their parents work multiple jobs or are unavailable, if they experience a language barrier or if there is no internet access at home. 

For many students from low-income households, FAFSA verification is another hurdle. While the review process is designed to prevent fraud, households that report lower incomes are disproportionately selected for verification. This perpetuates a stereotype that low-income families are more likely than middle- and higher-income families to commit fraud when, in fact, the recent college admissions scandal suggests that this is far from true.

Related: Are too few college students asking for federal aid?

Because verification requires additional paperwork for students with access to fewer resources, the process can be so overwhelming that it causes some students to abandon their applications altogether. This phenomenon is known as “verification melt”: between 20 and 30 percent of students eligible for Pell Grants who are selected for verification do not matriculate to college.

It is also important that any FAFSA graduation requirement not place an undue burden on families or schools. Passing a law, by itself, doesn’t give schools the resources they need to comply with it. We need to be careful that we aren’t simply telling schools to do more work without giving them the capacity to undertake it.

We propose two solutions to these challenges. The first is to simplify the FAFSA. With more than 100 questions, often requiring detailed tax return data, the FAFSA can act as a hurdle to low-income and first-generation college students.

While it is commonly agreed that the FAFSA’s financial reporting should be easier, we recommend three specific changes to the process. To make the verification process more equitable, we should expand data-sharing between the U.S. Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service so that students can verify their need through their participation in other means-tested federal programs. This proposal is touted by organizations like the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 

Institutions should also use standard verification forms for one-time completion so that high school seniors who have applied to multiple colleges and are flagged for verification do not have to comply with each college’s process in order to clear up the issues and receive their aid offers. There should be a document clearinghouse that both students and institutions can use to compare and understand information they receive from different schools. 

Second, we recommend offering more support to schools so that FAFSA completers get the most out of their application. At the school level, we need more college counselors to give students one-on-one guidance as they complete their applications. We also need to provide education for practitioners, such as college counselors, so that they are equipped with the latest knowledge about the FAFSA’s role in the college-admissions process. We don’t need to rely on government agencies for this. We can connect schools to quality community-based organizations that already specialize in this type of work and that can help to educate practitioners. Public/private partnerships can support students, families and schools to ensure that efforts to expand college access truly include all students. 

As CEOs of college-access organizations, we applaud and encourage states’ emerging efforts to expand the number of students who fill out the FAFSA, take the SAT and complete other college-access requirements. However, we also see in our daily work how important it is for these efforts to be accompanied by adequate supports for students, schools and families. These policies are as important as they are necessary. It is no less necessary to ensure that they create opportunities, not barriers, for students seeking access to college.

This story about making the FAFSA mandatory was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up here for our newsletter.

Bob Giannino, the first member of his family to graduate from college, is CEO of the college-affordability nonprofit uAspire. 

Yoon Choi is CEO of CollegeSpring, a nonprofit that trains schools in SAT prep for low-income students.

The post OPINION: Let’s make the FAFSA required for a high-school diploma, to increase college enrollment — and more counselors wouldn’t hurt either appeared first on The Hechinger Report.