During the beginning of the school year, a new FAFSA was put into place with the intent to make the financial process as simple as possible.
When it came to the release date, Dec. 15, 2023, the U.S. Department of Education was met with unsatisfied students and parents that were unable to use the site.
The Department of Education had three years to prepare the new FAFSA for the public.
Keith Ramsdell, the vice president for Enrollment Management, said, students got caught in the middle of this issue because it was not ready to be launched by Jan. 1, even though it was when it was required by law to be launched that day.
Since the Department of Education had no choice but to attempt to fix all the issues with the new FAFSA, it began to close doors for students returning to and starting college.
“The percentage of students many schools across the country are down in enrollment in the freshmen class. There is a percentage of students out there and we will probably see in the coming months how this actually impacted colleges,” Ramsdell said. “By large, we believe that the students who were most negatively impacted would be first-generation students and students of color who are most dependent on it.”
The old FAFSA was 108 questions and was cut down to less than 50 questions.
Parents and students that were having a hard time filling out the FAFSA were able to use many different resources from the AU financial aid team.
An estimate of only 29% of families thought the FAFSA was easier than last year’s ones.
AU tried to make sure our new and returning students received updated information on a regular basis, Ramsdell said.
AU offered financial aid workshops across the region, and financial aid counselors were made available for appointments online or in person.
AU’s enrollment was down nine percent this year from the FAFSA issues.
Ashland University has one of the largest correctional education programs in the country. While there were still a lot of issues getting resolved in the online FAFSA, they only started working on the paper FAFSA in the beginning of June.
“We have to abide by the department of corrections guides, so there are students they’re not allowed access to WIFI … our correctional students have to do the paper FAFSA, … they just started processing the paper ones … we are still waiting for paper FAFSAs for students,” said Dr. Alexander Jordan, executive director of Financial Aid.
Allowing more students to access resources, so it will be possible for them to attend college.
The only good news for the 25/26 FAFSA is that they are not changing any questions from the one this year.
This is the second year of the New FAFSA, which is supposed to be released on Oct.1, and has already been delayed to Dec. 1.
The U.S Board of Education has not informed schools of when they can get the data.
Ramsdell and Jordan said that all we can hope for now is that now all the issues from last year do not repeat themselves.
