FAFSA troubles: Students are still waiting on their financial aid packages (2024)

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Many college students have spent their summer wondering if their federal financial aid will come through in time for fall classes, all because of delays and glitches in this year's FAFSA form. Here's VPM's Megan Pauly.

IZZY WORKMAN: One second - I'm going through all the verification things.

MEGAN PAULY, BYLINE: College student Izzy Workman is sharing her screen via Zoom as she logs into her FAFSA portal.

WORKMAN: Excuse my tabs. I'm in college, so they're, like, everywhere.

PAULY: Izzy is a rising junior at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va. She's walking me through the challenges she faced when trying to submit the form this summer. It took Izzy and her mom more than a month to complete it. She started in mid-June and wasn't able to finish until the end of July.

WORKMAN: Because every time we went in the website, it would kick us back out and be like, oh, the website is down. FAFSA's not working. And we were like, it was just working 20 seconds ago. What happened? And then we would refresh the page a million times.

PAULY: The federal government uses the FAFSA to calculate college financial aid. This year's revamped form was supposed to make that a lot easier, but its launch has been plagued by glitches and errors. Those delays have thrown the traditional college financial aid timeline out the window. For some students, the question of where they'll enroll - or if they can even afford to - is running up against the start of the fall semester. Up until a few weeks ago, Izzy wasn't sure if she'd be able to continue her studies.

WORKMAN: I was really battling with whether or not I was going to be able to afford being here at my college that I really love so much, and that was heartbreaking for me.

PAULY: She got her answer when her financial aid came through in late July, a month before the start of classes. She learned she would actually get more aid than before, including a Pell Grant. For other students, the delays meant they missed out on financial aid. Joshua White works as a college adviser at a high school in Richmond, Va. He says scholarships often ask for students' FAFSA information.

JOSHUA WHITE: A lot of scholarship deadlines are in March, are in February. And we weren't able to get any FAFSA information until maybe May, June, July. So this crushed a lot of students' dreams.

PAULY: White has been fielding FAFSA questions from his students all summer.

WHITE: There was probably a phone call every single day saying, hey, Mr. White, I need help understanding what my financial aid award letter is saying. Or, hey, Mr. White, can you actually FaceTime me to see what's going on with my FAFSA?

BRAD BARNETT: This has been the most challenging year that I've ever seen.

PAULY: Brad Barnett is financial aid director for James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. He says college financial aid offices have also had a difficult summer. In a regular year, if a student's financial circ*mstances changed, like their parent becomes unemployed, it was a pretty easy fix. But this year, because of all the FAFSA delays, it's taken colleges a lot longer to update student aid packages.

BARNETT: We're counseling and consoling a lot of parents, validating a lot of feelings. But we're all in a situation where it's kind of hurry up and wait to get some of this stuff done.

PAULY: Some colleges, including James Madison, have responded to these delays by pushing back payment deadlines for the upcoming fall semester.

BARNETT: It just made more sense to just delay the bill being due until August 30 from the original August 9 date.

PAULY: Barnett is also thinking about what next fall might look like. The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that the next FAFSA will once again look a little different. It's committed to making the form fully available by December 1, two months later than the traditional FAFSA start date. Barnett says if it's just a delay and the glitches have been addressed, it shouldn't be that bad.

BARNETT: We made it through '24/'25. I think we can make it through anything.

PAULY: For NPR News, I'm Megan Pauly in Richmond, Va. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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