College classes are starting for many students around the country this week, and thousands of students are moving into their dorms here in Arizona. But, fewer Arizona high school graduates have applied for free federal aid to pay for it.
In fact, Arizona ranks 50th in the nation when it comes to FAFSA completion rates, or the Free Application for Student Aid. About 36% of Arizona seniors have filled out the form so far, according to the National College Attainment Network.
FAFSA has been something of a mess this year after the federal government completely revamped the form at the order of Congress. They were aiming to make it easier to fill out and more accessible. But, the process has been plagued with problems — delays in when the form opened, glitches and long wait times.
Since, the Arizona Board of Regents, or ABOR, received $1 million in federal funding from the Department of Education to boost FAFSA completion rates.
But, Kristina Guy says it came too late. Guy is a counselor at West-MEC high school as well as chair of the Arizona School Counselors Association. The Show spoke with her more about these low completion rates — and what she’s seeing on the ground.
Full conversation
KRISTINA GUY: So I think there's a lot of lack of education around the FAFSA and so we have a high number of parents that don't complete it because they think they make too much money or they don't complete it because they don't want to give their information to the government through this format.
And so there's a lot of unknowns I believe with parents that they don't have their students complete the FAFSA because they don't understand the benefits that could come with it.
LAUREN GILGER: So talk a little bit about those benefits and, and explain for us why this is so important. Like why a big part of a counselor's job like yours is to try to help kids find out where they're going to go and what they need to do to get there. But this is a part of that process.
GUY: Yeah. So filling out the, the FAFSA is really important, not just for the grants that you could get through the department of education or the different loans at lower interest rates than a private organization might give. But oftentimes when the colleges get this money, they can give scholarships or grants that the student or parent might not have even known existed, they might have different income thresholds than the FAFSA grant threshold is. So it really just opens up more opportunities that are kind of unknown or hidden.
Same thing with some private scholarships that ask for your information from FAFSA, they might be able to offer you more money that the student or parent might not have even known was out there.
GILGER: So there's been a big decrease in particularly first generation students, low income students, students from kind of mixed status families. That's a big population in Arizona, in particular. And we've seen fewer of those students fill out FAFSA this year. Are you seeing that as well?
GUY: Most definitely. I think that the change of Oct. 1 to pushing up the open date didn't help, especially because we didn't know when it was going to open and we were just told it has to open by De. 31. So counselors, school counselors on a campus were just kind of in limbo of trying to get students ready, but we didn't know when they needed to be ready. And there was also a fear that the system was going to crash right when it opened.
So it was kind of that, do I have them start it right when it opens? Do I have them wait a week or two weeks? Because there was just so much unknown about it. And when we start getting into these families that we're talking about, they don't know what they don't know. When we're talking about first generation, their parents never went through this process even though it looks different now, they don't know how to help them. They don't know that they need to help them.
Sometimes when we're getting into mixed status students trying to get that FSA ID or that electronic signature login that couldn't even happen until the application went live. And then when the application went live, there were so many issues with trying to get those families that FSA ID for that parent or as they're now calling it a contributor.
And so a lot of these students that typically struggle filling this out had so many more challenges that were unforeseen and really made it undesirable that families just didn't even want to try because of how hard it was.
GILGER: I wonder like what are they doing instead. For the students of yours who have not filled out these forms or of other counselors? Like, did they just not go to college? Did they find something else to do? Did they just pay more than they would have otherwise?
GUY: … Like I've mentioned, my kids leave with certifications and licenses. So we actually just had a student on campus this morning who I had met with in May who still didn't receive a financial aid offer and decided it was too much money for him to go and commit to a school uninformed. So he's working this year and he's going to try the process again when it opens up in December.
GILGER: Wow. So, ABOR and the federal government have tried to resolve this in recent months. Since the sort of, you know, mess of the roll out. They have, you know, $1 million in federal funding. They've been trying to get the message out to help more people fill out the form and they've reported that that's helped, it's resulted in about a 30% increase in FAFSA completions. Have you seen that working?
GUY: Yeah. So, I think the roll out from the U.S. Department of Education and from ABOR was a little late. Not of anything I think that they could have predicted because of what happened. But when that happens, students are typically gone. So for us to be able to reach them, it was a little harder.
I know ABOR did a lot of work of having application workshops around the whole state in rural areas because I feel like that was one of our hardest hit areas. And I know that the Department of Education had a FAFSA hotline that people could call in and get live help.
And so I felt like they were doing what they could, but even the U.S. Department of Education didn't know some of the challenges until April or May. I was on a call, a panel with the U.S. Department of Education and several counselors from around the country. And they were all talking about some of the issues that they had and the U.S. Department of Education didn't know those were issues.
There was a pocket of kids who filled out their, their FAFSA application early in the, in the spring semester and for whatever reason they sat and they didn't get processed. And so another counselor figured out, just have them go in and out of college, even if they're not going to go there, add a college. And so I started telling some of my students and, and counselors at other campus and those kids got processed like almost immediately and the U.S. Department of Education didn't know that was happening.
And so I think that the effort that they put in at the end was helpful. We did see that spike, but it was, it was just, it was late for a lot of counselors to be able to access those students.
GILGER: Yeah. So looking toward next year, like, what are your concerns? What are your hopes here? Like you said, you have one student who's going to try again next time around, right? Like, do you hope this will be better next time around?
GUY: I certainly hope it's better. I know that the actual process of filling out the application was much easier last year. It wasn't, that wasn't all of the issues. It was a lot of the backend with the Department of Ed. So I'm hoping that they have those resolved.
A lot of students that filled it out early, they miscalculated their formula. And so it said students were not eligible for grants and they were, because they got it out so late to universities, they didn't award their financial aid packages until early to mid-May.
So my hope is that this goes back to a somewhat normal timeline. The kids are getting their financial aid packages in February, March. Even though that's, that's later. It's still earlier than it was this past school year.
