FAFSA woes hit Iowa universities; students still struggling to pay tuition

AMES — Although more “postmortem” is needed to determine the full impact of the massive delays and confusion that plagued the government’s botched rollout of its revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid last term, admissions directors at Iowa’s public universities last week recounted the ramifications for their campuses, their applicants and their returning students.

“We still, as of this week, have identified about 200 current students on our campus that completed the FAFSA, that received a financial aid offer, but are still having issues having their financial aid dispersed, and they're unable to pay their tuition,” University of Iowa Assistant Provost and Executive Director of Admissions Kirk Kluver told the Board of Regents during its meeting last week in Ames.

“We've been working with them individually to resolve these issues, and we have waived any kind of late fees that are involved with the delay in paying their tuition.”

Although Kluver didn’t share details about the students still struggling to secure aid — and what specific problems they’re facing — admissions officials across Iowa’s public university system said the FAFSA delays, confusion, hurdles and hiccups seemed to impact out-of-state and international applicants more than Iowans.

That was evident, officials said, in the higher number of non-residents waiting later in the cycle — until after financial and scholarship awards were made — to accept admission offers from the universities.

And at the University of Northern Iowa — which serves a higher percentage of low-income and first-generation families — “the delays really did impact our students,” according to UNI Director of Admissions Terri Crumley.

“Our counselors tend to really reach out to Pell Grant recipients in a special way, because we know that they need additional assistance,” she said. “And not having that data to know who those students were, not knowing which students filed a FAFSA and who did not file a FAFSA was very problematic for a serious period of time.”

Making up for the delays took significant work across all three campuses, including at Iowa State University, where Assistant Vice President and Executive Director of Admissions Katherine Suski said, “There were a number of downstream impacts of the FAFSA delays.”

“Until we had financial data, we were unable to award many scholarships across the university.”

On a positive note, Suski said, applicants from Iowa seemed to respond differently than most applicants nationally — given the lower tuition rates at the public institutions for in-state students.

“My interpretation is that students were willing to commit earlier and without financial aid packages due to the strong value offered by Iowa State as a regent university,” she said. “Even without knowing their financial aid awards, they knew that their Iowa State education would be affordable.”

Still, given about 40 percent of the regent university students come from outside Iowa — the highest percentage in at least a decade — the influx of delayed decisions from non-resident applicants impacted the campuses in a variety of ways, including university enrollment and budget planning, housing management, course management and orientation attendance.

‘Late nights and weekends’

Where the FAFSA in the previous cycle opened to the public Oct. 1, 2022 — with student information distributed to institutions by November 2022 and awards mailed out mid-February 2023 — this last FAFSA cycle didn’t open until Dec. 30, 2023, and even then had problems.

Campuses didn’t start getting student information until mid-March — making it impossible to distribute awards on the typical time frame.

“If we go back to early March, we still had not received any student financial aid records from high school seniors,” according to UI’s Kluver, who said his campus had record applications and thousands of accepted admission offers but no idea how many would actually enroll after aid offers went out.

“There were weeks in the spring where we feared we would be under-enrolling, and there were weeks where we had real fears that we'd be over-enrolling, which would cause some significant challenges on our campus with housing and orientation and course availability,” Kluver told regents.

In the end, he said, “It all worked out.”

The UI enrolled its “optimal” target of 5,208 first-year students and 1,085 transfer students — bringing the campus total to 30,779 and on a steady five-year growth plan toward 33,000 students.

“But there were several late nights and weekends that our folks put in in order to get financial aid offers out as quickly as they could,” he said.

Reporting the university received its first batch of student financial records March 12, Kluver said the team sent out its first round of aid offers April 16.

“That was a record turnaround time for our campus,” he said. “And we believe we're the first Big Ten university to get financial aid offers in the hands of students.”

ISU — which ended up enrolling a first-year class of 5,906 students and 30,432 total — in late April amassed an “all-hands-on-deck” assembly team of more than 35 financial aid and admissions employees to get award letters out to about 16,000 first-year admits.

They stuffed and sealed all the envelopes within a few hours, according to Student Financial Aid Director Chad Olson.

Were it not for the long hours and extra effort and flexibility, UI’s Kluver said, “I have no doubt that the impact of delays could have been very severe.”

‘No longer a benefit to those families’

At the national level, the number of 2024 high school seniors who completed a FAFSA dropped 9 percent year-over-year, with Iowa’s year-over-year decrease reaching nearly 10 percent, according to the National College Attainment Network.

Through Sept. 13, 52 percent of the 2024 high school graduates nationally had completed a FAFSA, down from 58.4 percent through the same period in 2023. At the state level, 49 percent of Iowa’s 2024 high school seniors have completed a FAFSA — even as UI admissions reported an 8 percent increase in first-year applications.

And, despite it all, Kluver said his campus is seeing some consistency among enrolled students.

“If you look at our first-year enrolled class, 87-86 percent of those students submitted a FAFSA,” he said. “That number was 87 percent last year. We're also encouraged to see the percentage of our first-year students receiving a Pell Grant increase; 19.3 percent of our new first-year students received a Pell Grant. That was 17.4 percent of our first-year class last year.”

University admissions officials expressed concern the FAFSA woes would hit certain populations especially hard — including students hoping to become the first in their family to attend college.

“So we were very pleased to maintain our 20 percent of first-in-family-to-attend-college in our entering class this year,” Kluver said. “We also had some real concerns about retention. As students were thinking about coming back for their second year, their financial aid offer would have a significant impact on that decision. And, with the work of our team, we were able to deliver financial aid offers to returning students in April.”

The admissions officials told regents they were worried about how some changes in the FAFSA formula might affect specific populations they serve — including those with farm and small business assets.

“There were certainly concerns, especially with farm assets and small business assets, that there would be students that would have been eligible in the past that were no longer eligible,” Kluver said, adding changes to benefits for siblings in college also was a worry.

“We were really concerned about that — that for multiple children in college, there was no longer a benefit to those families,” he said. “That particularly would impact current students that may have received some type of federal aid that would no longer be eligible.

“And certainly we’ve had several of those students in our financial aid offices this year trying to seek solutions, when they have a new formula and their aid had been reduced significantly.”

All three admissions officers said they were eager to get back on a more standard timeline for the new cycle — with expectations the FAFSA will open Dec. 1 and they’ll start getting student information later that month.

“We'll feel very good about this process if we begin receiving student financial aid records in mid-December,” Kluver said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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