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  • FAFSA delays are leaving students in limbo. California campuses don’t expect help

    FAFSA delays are leaving students in limbo. California campuses don’t expect help


    Sheilds Library at UC Davis.

    Credit: Karin HIggins/UC Davis

    The U.S. Department of Education is attempting to solve issues associated with this year’s rocky rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and ensure colleges and universities release financial aid packages in a timely manner through a new plan announced Monday — but some California campuses remain pessimistic about receiving support. 

    This year, 17 million students across the nation completed the redesigned form and are now awaiting offers from colleges. Last year, more than 1 million California students submitted FAFSA applications, marking a 5.9% increase from the previous year, when Covid was said to have hindered the number of applicants.

    Despite the department unveiling a simpler, quicker form in a “soft launch” on Dec. 31, this year’s FAFSA process has come with four-to-six week delays, and colleges and universities throughout the country won’t receive students’ financial aid applications until March at the earliest. As a result, many campuses are contemplating extending the May 1 commitment deadline for high school seniors whose decisions about where to enroll rest on the financial aid they receive.  

    “We’re not only talking about a better form or a better system. We’re talking about a better shot at accessing higher education for more than 600,000 American students. We’re talking about a better chance to go to college for students who would qualify for Pell Grants,” said Miguel Cardona, the U.S. secretary of education, at a news conference announcing the department’s plan Monday. 

    “We’re talking about making the American dream more achievable for so many more people who could realize the incredible potential they have through higher education but have been deterred by the cost and complexity of our current system.” 

    As part of the plan unveiled Monday, the department will send about 50 federal student aid officials to colleges and universities throughout the nation to help “prepare and process” students’ financial aid forms. 

    Senior Education Department officials did not provide a number or list of campuses that will receive support, but they emphasized that lower-resourced campuses will be prioritized, including historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges. 

    The plan also includes $50 million in federal funding for nonprofit organizations that focus on financial aid support. The department will also release test records for campuses to model. 

    “Ensuring our nation’s colleges and universities are prepared to assist in the massive overhaul of the FAFSA is critical for a smooth implementation, and we are excited to be partners in this work,” said Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, in a statement. 

    “These are some of the biggest changes facing the financial aid profession — not to mention students and families — in decades, and it will take cooperation, clear communication, and mutual trust among all stakeholders to get us over the finish line. We are eager to begin this work and look forward to sharing more details soon.”

    However, Cal Poly Pomona officials doubt the plan to support campuses outlined by the U.S. Department of Education will do much to help CSU, UC or community colleges in California. Charles Conn, the campus’s associate director of financial aid, also said the announced measures should have been taken months ago. 

    So far, the UC system has not decided whether to push back the May 1 deadline, but Rachel Zaentz, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, told Inside Higher Ed that the delays might have “significant implications” for students’ decisions. 

    Several Cal State campuses, however, have opted to adjust their timelines — as that is something officials say they can control. 

    Cal Poly Pomona, for example, has updated its commitment deadline for incoming first-year students to June 1 as a result of the delays, according to Jessica Wagoner, the campus’s senior associate vice president for enrollment management and services. 

    “It’s heartbreaking … to see this happening and know the impact that it has on the students, especially first-generation students from a lower income, or even the lower middle-class students,” Conn said. 

    “They’re relying on this information, and the Department of Education has really failed the graduating class as well as students who maybe are looking to transition from a community college over to a four-year college.” 

    Typically, Cal Poly Pomona would determine aid offers by the end of February. This year, as a result of issues with student information systems and the Department of Education’s delays, they probably won’t be able to extend offers until the middle of April.

    Conn added that delays will likely challenge students who need to update their records and that there are still some families unable to complete the FAFSA — including families where at least one parent doesn’t have a social security number. 

    “That’s a big population,” Conn said. “It’s not like two or three students. It’s in the hundreds if not thousands of our students that fall into that scenario across the system.”

    Most continuing students, however, will not be impacted, Conn said. 

    Delays with the FAFSA have also affected Cal Poly Pomona’s other operations and the ability to predict the nature of the incoming class, ranging from the number of students attending to the distribution of different majors, according to Traci Lew, the interim associate director of admissions. 

    It also tightens the turnaround time for organizing campus events such as orientation — which takes place 10 days after the June 1 deadline. 

    Despite the challenges posed by the later deadline, Lew emphasized that “we can’t allow families to make shotgun decisions.” 

    “We want to help our students, and right now we can’t. We are blind to the information,” Wagoner said. “So if they call us, there’s nothing we can say to assist and support our students. We should be on the phone helping them, guiding them, and we can’t do that.” 





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  • Colleges and universities must step up to counteract financial aid form delays

    Colleges and universities must step up to counteract financial aid form delays


    California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

    Credit: Ashley Bolter / EdSource

    In any given year, planning for higher education and applying for financial aid is a complicated, overwhelming and time-consuming process for families.

    This year, amid an extensive list of changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, application and processing delays, and the growing list of glitches and issues with the application, submitting the FAFSA by the deadline for priority admission to California state universities may seem like an impossible task.

    Parents and families that our organization has worked with and surveyed in this application cycle are frustrated. And, with so much at stake for their students, they want to know: “Given all the delays with the FAFSA, will students have a longer time to decide which school to go to next year?”

    We think they should.

    The experiences of the families we connected with are consistent with what we are seeing nationwide. A National College Attainment Network analysis found that FAFSA submissions for the class of 2024 lag behind last year’s senior class by 42%. Even if families are able to submit an application, institutions won’t be able to create financial aid packages until early April, six weeks later than previously announced, and four months later than is typical.

    These delays are more than an inconvenience.

    Delays and technical issues with the application will have the most significant impact on the students who need financial aid the most. Students of color, students from mixed-status families, first-generation college students, students experiencing homelessness, and students in the foster care system are more likely to experience difficulty accessing financial aid, or completing their applications at all. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced a resolution to a problem that was halting the application process for students with parents without a social security number, giving those students less than three weeks to submit their applications.

    Policymakers and advocates across the country have offered various proposals to ensure that students and families have ample time to make an informed decision about higher education. Over 100 members of Congress urged Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to provide clarity and “minimize the potential impact” of the issues with the FAFSA.

    California state legislators are currently debating a one-month extension for state financial aid. The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association released recommendations for states given the delay in Institutional Student Information Records. The National College Attainment Network and nine other organizations have called for the extension of university commitment and scholarship deadlines.

    The U.S. Department of Education recently announced it would relax requirements for colleges and universities in order to allow more time for getting financial aid packages to families. However, this alone is not enough to ensure that students across the country have access to the money they need to attend college.

    Institutions of higher education must be proactive and support students and families to access the financial aid they deserve. Colleges and universities should delay commitment and scholarship deadlines to June 1 to allow families enough time to compare financial aid packages and decide which university is right for them.

    The FAFSA Simplification Act was designed to make financial aid more accessible to students across the country. Let’s not penalize the students and families who are essentially beta testers this year. We must do all we can to remove as many obstacles as possible for students and keep our promise of simplifying the financial aid process for this class and every class to follow.

    •••

    Darcel Sanders is CEO of GO Public Schools, a nonprofit organization working with families to advocate for the equitable public education of underserved students in California. She previously served as legislative director for state Sen. Carol Liu and earlier worked as a middle school teacher in Oakland.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • UC delays vote on much-debated proposal to restrict some faculty speech

    UC delays vote on much-debated proposal to restrict some faculty speech


    Public speakers address UC leaders during a March UC regents meeting at UCLA.

    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    The University of California’s board of regents has delayed voting until May on a controversial policy proposal that would restrict faculty from using some university websites to make opinionated and political statements, such as opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza.

    The proposal would ban faculty departments and other academic units from using the homepages of their department websites to make “discretionary statements,” which the proposal defines as comments on “local, regional, global or national” events or issues and not related to daily departmental operations.

    In the days leading up to the meeting, the UC system’s Academic Senate had asked the regents to reject or at least delay a vote and expressed concerns that the proposal would limit freedom of speech.

    The policy was scheduled for a vote Wednesday during a joint meeting of the regents’ academic affairs and compliance and audit committees. But regents voted to delay a final decision until their next meeting in May. Before that meeting, they plan to collect additional comments from the Academic Senate and other regents.

    “People will submit their issues that they have. The Academic Senate will do their thing. We’ll hear everyone’s point of view. We’ll modify if we need to modify. And maybe we could just personally commit that we’ll vote in the next meeting,” said regent Jay Sures, one of the regents responsible for bringing the proposal forward. Sures is vice-chairman of United Talent Agency, a powerful entertainment and sports-related firm.

    Regent Jay Sures, seen during Wednesday’s board meeting, backs a proposal to curb opinionated comments on academic department homepages.
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    UC systemwide President Michael Drake also supported delaying the vote, saying he doesn’t think the policy is finished and that the university “needs to get it right” before moving forward.

    The policy doesn’t mention a specific issue, but many faculty see it as an attempt to limit what they can say about Israel’s war in Gaza. The consideration of the policy, which has been in the works for months, comes after UC’s Ethnic Studies Faculty Council and several faculty departments have criticized Israel over the war. In addition, when the policy was first discussed at January’s regents meeting, regent Hadi Makarechian said the board was considering the policy because “some people were making political statements related to Hamas and Palestinians.”

    UC leaders who support the policy have said it is needed to ensure that the opinions of faculty departments aren’t misinterpreted as representing the university as a whole. 

    It’s unclear whether the policy will get enough support among the board when it does go to a vote. Some regents voiced concern Wednesday about the proposal’s possible impacts.

    Merhawi Tesfai, a graduate student at UCLA and a student regent, said during the meeting that he doesn’t think the regents should be setting a systemwide policy.

    “I think each campus should be free to decide on what policies they’re going to be doing, what guidelines they’re going to set around this issue,” he added.

    Another regent, Keith Ellis, said he was concerned that the policy could be used “as a weapon” against faculty.

    If faculty departments or other academic units, such as research centers, do want to make opinionated statements, the proposal still would allow them to publish those elsewhere on UC web pages, just not on the homepages. Those statements would also need to include a disclaimer explaining that the opinions don’t represent the university as a whole. The policy also allows faculty and groups of faculty to publish their opinions on private websites. 

    Last week, the Academic Senate formally requested that the regents reject the proposal or at least delay a vote. The Senate’s Academic Council voted unanimously, 19-0, in making that request to the regents. In a letter to the regents, Academic Senate leaders said the policy has the potential to “limit free speech and impinge on academic freedom,” among other concerns. 

    An overflow crowd waits outside of Wednesday’s meeting of the UC board of regents at UCLA.
    Credit: Julie Leopo / EdSource

    The policy was updated after the Senate submitted its comments, and did include some changes addressing the concerns raised. The latest draft of the policy, for example, includes a definition of the types of statements that would be banned, whereas the previous version did not.

    In remarks to the regents, Academic Senate Chair James Steintrager said the latest version was a step in the right direction but lamented that the Senate had only two days to review the latest version before the meeting. He urged the regents to delay a vote and send the draft policy out for further review by the Senate.

    Trevor Griffey, a lecturer at UCLA and a vice president for the union representing UC’s non-tenure track faculty, wrote on social media on Wednesday that the union is worried about how the policy would be enforced. The union “believes that enforcement of this vague standard cannot be done consistently, and is likely to increase interest group pressure” on faculty departments, Griffey wrote.

    Griffey also said the regents were trying to bypass the Senate on this issue. Rather than approving a new policy, Senate leaders have asked the regents to adopt recommendations made by the Senate in 2022. 

    The Senate determined at that time that UC faculty departments have the right to “make statements on University-owned websites” as long as the statements don’t take positions on elections. The Senate, like the regents, also recommended that those statements include disclaimers that the departments don’t speak for the university as a whole. But the Senate didn’t discourage statements from appearing on departmental homepages. 

    “These recommendations were based on comprehensive consultation with faculty on the ten campuses, as well as with UC Legal consultants. They are intended to guide departments whose members opt to post statements to do so in ways that minimize downsides and that do not infringe on academic freedom,” the Senate leaders wrote in their letter to the regents last week.

    Since last fall, some faculty departments have included statements on their websites criticizing Israel. The homepage for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department website has a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” 

    In a letter last fall, the systemwide UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council also criticized UC leaders for their public statements following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. The council said UC’s statements lacked context because they didn’t acknowledge Israeli violence against Palestine, including “75 years of settler colonialism and globally acknowledged apartheid.” The faculty also said UC’s statements “irresponsibly wield charges of terrorism.” 

    Sures, the regent who supports the proposal, responded with a letter of his own, saying the council’s letter was “rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.” He also pledged to do “everything in my power” to protect “everyone in our extended community from your inflammatory and out of touch rhetoric.” The faculty responded by criticizing Sures for not condemning Israeli violence and calling on him to resign. 





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  • FAFSA delays make it difficult for students to finalize college decisions

    FAFSA delays make it difficult for students to finalize college decisions


    A student heads toward the Student Services building at Los Angeles Pierce College

    Credit: Delilah Brumer/EdSource

    Waiting for college financial aid offers has been worrying for Kamila Juarez, a high school senior at Grace Davis High School in Modesto. The prolonged timeline of this process, caused by a delayed release of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has added to the uncertainty. 

    “It’s kind of stressful, just because I know that when I do know how much I get, it’s going to be pretty fast,” Juarez said. “So knowing that I have all this waiting time, I can’t really do much about it besides apply for scholarships and wait to hear back from those scholarships. It’s pretty suspenseful.”

    The U.S. Department of Education launched a renewed version of FAFSA on Dec. 31, 2023 —  three months later than the usual release each Oct. 1 — because the new form was not ready to be rolled out on time. The new FAFSA was said to be simpler and more efficient for families to complete, with the intention of providing more students with aid due to a new formula. 

    With FAFSA’s availability issues, about 5.7 million students have successfully completed the application, compared to the average of 17 million applicants at this point in previous years. The compressed time schedule strained families applying for financial aid. 

    The Education Department’s deadline for getting student financial aid data to colleges and universities was last week, so schools are only now receiving that information. And on Friday, complications piled up, as the Education Department announced that a miscalculation in “the formula of the FAFSA resulted in incorrect financial need information for several hundred thousand students being sent to colleges and universities.”

    The delays led all nine UC campuses to push back their Intent to Register deadline to May 15, while all 23 CSU campuses to no earlier than May 15. Despite the 15-day commitment deadline extension, some students said they are facing difficulties in making a decision without knowing their financial aid package for the 2024-25 academic year.

    On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill extending the state’s financial aid deadline to give students more time to apply for state aid programs.

    Juarez said she has received scholarships from Sonoma State University and California State University, Monterey Bay but is waiting until she knows what financial aid she’ll get from every school before making her decision. 

    “My biggest (factor), I would say, is financial aid, as well as location,” Juarez said.

    Juarez said she hopes to be able to go to either Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or UCLA and major in city planning or geography and environmental science. 

    Finean Hunter-Kenney, a senior from Lowell High School in San Francisco, said the FAFSA delays have also heavily impacted his decision in committing to college. 

    “I can’t make any decision on where to go to college without all the financial info,” he said. “Right now I’m in the process of committing to Chapman University to play baseball, but I can’t make that decision final until I see how much FAFSA will pay for, because the tuition is really expensive.” 

    Hunter-Kenney said he feels pressure to say “yes,” because the deadline is May 1, but he can’t accept the offer until FAFSA releases financial aid information. For him, there is “definitely a limit” when it comes to the cost of tuition, and while aid is not “make or break,” it will still affect his college decision. 

    “I am pretty stressed about where to go,” Hunter-Kenney said. “The financial aspect is stressful as well, because without all the information, I don’t know how much in loans I’m going to have to take out, and that’s something I want to know before I decide to go anywhere.” 

    For Isabella Gentile, a communication studies major at Pasadena City College, financial aid was one of the main reasons she decided to focus her transfer applications on in-state public universities and avoid the financial uncertainty that can come with private or out-of-state schools.

    “I know I would receive more money from (my) grant if I attended a UC school versus if I attended a private school, which impacted my decision to not apply to somewhere like USC,” Gentile said.

    However, Gentile also said that the transfer and financial aid process has been “good and easy” overall, because she was able to submit everything she needed to.

    Other students filling out this year’s FAFSA have faced technical difficulties, according to Laura Burtness, a college and career adviser at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo. Some of these issues are related to her students’ citizenship status.

    “There is difficulty for mixed residency families, or families where not all claim U.S. citizenship,” Burtness said. Error messages and application rejections have been common when parents don’t have social security numbers — classified as “eligible non-citizens” for FAFSA purposes. Families calling the help line have reportedly been met with recordings of outdated information or advice to try to fill out the form again later.

    The Education Department announced in late February that students who have at least one parent without a social security number would be able to successfully submit FAFSA forms in the first half of March.

    Burtness mentioned the urgency and concern she’s had for the students she has worked with all year.

    “I think this is going to be a big deal because we’re running out of time. Hillsdale’s graduation is on May 30, and we’re doing anything we can to help,” she said.

    Los Angeles Pierce College political science major Eric Guerrero faced the more common technical difficulties; he said he spent weeks troubleshooting his FAFSA form before he was able to submit it in late January. 

    Guerrero plans to transfer to a four-year university this fall and has his sights set on UCLA. He said the challenges he faced with FAFSA have made his transfer process harder.

    “Every time I tried it, it was crashing or it wouldn’t load,” Guerrero said. “It was so hectic. Trying to get it done was horrible, and I was really nervous. Eventually, one random night at like 2 in the morning, it finally went through.”

    Ashley Bolter is a fourth-year journalism student minoring in French and ethnic studies at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Delilah Brumer is a sophomore at Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in journalism and political science. Kelcie Lee is a first-year student at UC Berkeley majoring in history and sociology. Abbie Phillips is a third-year journalism student minoring in Spanish at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. All are members of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.





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  • California’s universities navigate unprecedented FAFSA mistakes and delays 

    California’s universities navigate unprecedented FAFSA mistakes and delays 


    The Student Services Center at Chico State.

    Credit: Jason Halley / Chico State

    This story was updated on 4/16 to include the latest information on California’s drop in completed FAFSA applications.

    Unprecedented difficulties in students applying for federal financial aid have wreaked havoc among financial aid and admissions officers across California’s colleges and universities, who are facing longer hours and more stress, sometimes while short on staff.

    Since its initial delay last year from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, the U.S. Department of Education’s rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form has been challenging and frustrating for students, their families and the college campuses they seek to attend. For many students, financial aid plays a significant role in deciding where and if they will go to college. 

    And the resulting delays have pushed back students’ decisions.

    Kamila Juarez, a senior at Grace Davis High in Modesto, has been accepted to all the universities she’s applied to including Cal Poly SLO, UC Davis, UCLA and UC San Diego, but she hasn’t decided where she will go because financial aid is the biggest influence on her decision. And Juarez hasn’t heard anything yet about how much she will receive, which has created a frustrating situation. 

    “It’s kind of stressful,” she said, adding that if money were not an option her first choice would be Cal Poly followed by UCLA. “When I do know how much I get, I know I’ll have to decide pretty fast.”

    Both UC and CSU systems extended the deadline for Intent to Register for fall 2024 to no earlier than May 15. A host of other Cal State campuses extended it further to June 1 because of the delays. 

    Harder hit than other states

    California, in particular, has been hard hit in the FAFSA debacle because of the large number of “mixed-status” families, or U.S. citizens who have at least one parent without a Social Security number. Many of those students have been unable to submit a FAFSA. Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Student Aid Commission and the UC and Cal State systems agreed that students could submit a California Dream Act application in place of the FAFSA so they could at least receive priority access to state financial aid. The Dream Act is typically only available to undocumented students.

    “We do hope to get offers out (soon). It still feels like there is an equity issue between being able to send out financial aid offers that have zero problems to not being able to provide financial aid offers to students that fit in these other scenarios,” said Becki Sanchez, director of financial aid at UC Irvine. “In a sense, it makes us feel very uneasy.” 

    The situation doesn’t seem to be improving.

    “It has been very scary, to say the least, trying to keep up with all of these changes and errors and resolutions that don’t make sense from the feds,” said Sonia Jethani, director of financial aid and scholarships at California State University, East Bay. “We’re hanging in there. We have to make sure that we’re on top of it in order to answer the students and provide support to them as much as possible. But I’ve never seen this before.” 

    Financial aid and admissions officers say that in the nearly 40 years that the FAFSA has existed, this year’s problems have been unprecedented.

    Typically, as has been the process for decades, high school seniors and community college transfer students would begin completing the FAFSA in October to meet California’s March priority deadline for access to state aid like the Cal Grant. During that period, those students would submit applications to the colleges and universities that they’re seeking admission to, so they would have their offer letters by early spring. The traditional timing allowed financial aid offices to send details about grants, loans and scholarships to students around March and April, in time for them to make a decision on the college they plan to attend in the fall. 

    But this year’s repeated FAFSA disruptions means colleges haven’t been able to send out aid awards, either because students have had trouble applying, the department has miscalculated some students’ aid, or colleges haven’t received any aid information from the department. Each award letter sent by colleges to their admitted students that complete a financial aid application is customized with a combination of federal, state and institutional, grants, loans and scholarships.

    California extended deadline

    According to the National College Attainment Network’s FAFSA tracker, California is among the states that dropped the most in FAFSA completions compared to last year before the form was revised. As of April 5, completions were down 43.4%.

    California extended its priority FAFSA application deadline to May 2. 

    “We should have had our financial aid packages ready by now,” Jethani said. “We probably won’t be ready to send out aid notifications until the second half of this month.” 

    Financial aid officers at Cal Poly Pomona anticipate that they will start sending award letters to students this week. The campus added workshops, including on Saturdays, to host informational sessions and help students complete the FAFSA. Jeanette Phillips, executive director of financial aid and scholarships for the campus, said they will also do some extra tracking and target their communications to make sure their admitted students completed the FAFSA. 

    “Like many schools. we’re a little short-staffed, but we are doing our very best,” Phillips said, adding that the delays have added work to their normal spring duties like processing summer financial aid, which “is a significantly manual process. … We still have to work with our current students. We have a number of appeals that students have submitted for financial review.” 

    Phillips said normally the financial aid officers would have plenty of time to focus and prioritize, “but now we have to double up, triple up our energy and efforts to try to handle” everything. 

    Because the Pomona campus is fielding more questions and concerns from families this year, Phillips said financial aid officers are spending about an extra 15% of their time meeting with students. 

    The mistakes from the federal department also have financial aid officers adding unique disclosures to the information they give their potential students. The department notified colleges last week that they made mistakes on tax information submitted by students, amounting to about 30% to 40% of unusable files. 

    “We feel like the Department of Education has basically put it on the universities to figure this out for our students,” Sanchez said. “It’s really disappointing, their response to this.” 

    Sanchez said the Irvine campus has about 30% of financial aid offers it can’t send because they need to be reprocessed by the department. 

    Jethani said the East Bay financial aid officers are providing disclosures to students within their financial aid packages that the information they receive is based on information that could change because of the various errors and mistakes from the department. 

    Some of the mistakes are due to the new formula the department is using to determine aid. In the past, the FAFSA used “expected family contribution” to calculate students’ aid, but the new form uses the “student aid index formula.” In March, the department announced a miscalculation of the student aid index, which led to further delays.

    CSU East Bay and some other campus have partnered with third-party vendors to help with their FAFSA “backend processing” like verifying information because they are short on staff, and the East Bay campus anticipates it will also be “triaging” and fielding various questions from students even after the fall term begins, Jethani said.

    During a hearing on the FAFSA debacle on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, gave the department an F grade for its rollout.

    “This really adds up to a crisis of credibility for the Department of Education,” he said. “If there was a financial aid director or even a college president that delayed financial aid on their campus for up to six months, the professional price that would be paid for that would be pretty steep.” 

    And as for those mixed-status students that are now encouraged to fill out the Dream Act application, Sanchez said her office will still try to encourage them to complete the FAFSA. 

    “These are U.S. citizens, and they are entitled to federal student aid such as the Pell Grant and student loans, federal work-study, and all those things that they are not eligible for under the (Dream Act application),” she said. 

    Impact on enrollments

    The ripple effect of this year’s FAFSA delays is expected to significantly affect campuses’ enrollments, especially those that have faced challenges encouraging students to attend. 

    “Universities nationwide are likely seeing enrollment downturns just like East Bay right now,” Jethani said. “We are low in enrollment, and we are low in applications, and we are low on decisions because all of these students are waiting on their financial aid to be able to decide on whether they can afford to come. This is a pretty scary time for everyone.” 

    The universities are facing pressure to maintain or raise their enrollments, but Phillips said California has an additional competitor for students to contend with: an increase in the minimum wage. 

    “The decision that some students are making out of high school is, do I go get that $20 an hour job or do I go to school?” Phillips said. 

    About 70% of Cal Poly Pomona’s students receive some form of financial aid, which means that the delays have made it difficult for the campus to project what the fall enrollment will look like, said Jessica Wagoner, senior associate vice president of enrollment management and services.  

    The UC system, on the other hand, saw record applications this year because of an increase in students who want to transfer, and there are expectations that enrollment will continue to increase across its campuses. But there is still concern that the FAFSA problems will particularly affect low-income and first-generation students.  

    “We’re a very popular campus, so I’m not worried about us making our big numbers,” said Dale Leaman, executive director of undergraduate admissions for UC Irvine. “The thing that concerns me the most is the students who just get so frustrated with the situation that they just give up … especially our first-generation families, where parents have not gone through this.” 

    Sanchez said families have lost a lot of trust in the department because of the poor FAFSA rollout, so the responsibility will fall on universities to rebuild that trust. 

    “My job is to make this successful in spite of things going bad,” she said. “My plan is if the Department of Education isn’t going to pull it together, we are certainly going to make sure that our students are OK, that they’re not harmed, that they start classes on time, that they don’t have to worry about these things.” 

    California Student Journalism Corps member Ashley Bolter contributed to this report.





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  • California colleges report no financial aid delays so far but fear federal upheaval

    California colleges report no financial aid delays so far but fear federal upheaval


    A 2025-26 FAFSA form.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Financial aid staff at California’s colleges and universities have a cautiously optimistic message to share this spring — but are weighing contingencies in case massive restructuring and cuts at the U.S. Department of Education upend federal aid this summer and fall. 

    First, the good news. Federal aid for this spring term — like Pell Grants and work-study aid — has already been disbursed. Universities are processing files from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, for next fall on schedule. And in turn, colleges are sending prospective students preview offers of grants and other support they are eligible to receive if they enroll.

    But trepidation is building about what’s ahead for the hundreds of thousands of California college students receiving Pell Grants and federal loans. Layoffs that have roughly halved the U.S. Department of Education’s workforce “raise serious concerns about the near future, particularly potential delays to the upcoming FAFSA cycle and the federal government’s capacity to accurately distribute billions in student aid,” said Toni DeBoni, the associate vice president for enrollment management at CSU Channel Islands.

    Those worries come following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all lawful steps” to close the Department of Education. The White House wants to potentially shift the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and even transfer Pell Grants to another department.

    Trump administration officials have pledged not to interrupt services as they wind down the Education Department, which would require congressional action to be formally eliminated. Trump says student loan servicing has “been a mess” and that it would improve under the SBA. But critics charge that dismantling Education parceling out its workload could hamper the distribution of aid to millions of students and harm student borrowers.

    If those dire predictions prove true, the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems would face disruption to a major funding source. Cal State received almost $2.3 billion and UC about $1.7 billion in federal student aid in the 2022-23 school year, much of it for Pell Grants and student loans. Any delay would also be felt at California community colleges, where 24% of students received a Pell Grant in the 2023-24 school year.

    Both university systems are reassuring prospective students and saying they think federal student aid will continue uninterrupted, despite fears of possible cutbacks.

    A UC spokesperson said in a statement that the system of 10 campuses does “not expect recent news about the U.S. Department of Education to impact our ability to award and disburse financial aid to our students” and that federal grants and loans remain available “with no anticipated changes to availability in the foreseeable future.”

    A CSU spokesperson said the 23-campus university system does not anticipate any delay or stop to federal student aid in the 2025-26 school year, adding that “the number of [student and parent] concerns regarding recent federal actions haven’t been widespread.” Systemwide, almost 42% of CSU students receive a Pell Grant, a form of aid for students from low-income families that can provide up to $7,395 for the 2025-26 award year. 

    However, Cal State officials addressed the uncertainty about federal changes more directly at the March meeting of the system’s board of trustees.

    “We know that there have been some (departures) of employees in the Department of Education,” Chancellor Mildred García said. “We are concerned about the process it will take to really go through the FAFSA, and that’s the most that we have heard.”

    “We don’t know who’s going to be processing our FAFSA applications, who is the people in charge, etc.,” she added.

    Nathan Evans, the CSU system’s chief academic officer, said that students and families seeking help with their federal student aid “are having difficulty in connecting and engaging with folks that support the FAFSA process at the federal level. So our teams at our universities are working as hard as possible, but sometimes those answers can only come from the folks that are helping support that directly.”

    Meanwhile, the California Student Aid Commission reported in late February that the number of high school seniors completing financial aid applications was down 25% compared with the same point two years ago, before the rocky rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA. State officials attributed the decline in part to a nearly two-month delay in the opening last fall of the current federal financial aid cycle.

    Aiming to boost applications, the California Student Aid Commission extended the state’s priority deadline — the date by which students planning to attend four-year schools must apply for most state aid programs — until April 2. The latest commission data shows that as of April 1, about 55% of current high school seniors have completed a FAFSA or the California Dream Act Application, a form of state financial aid aimed at undocumented students. An aid commission spokesperson said the commission plans to soon compare applications through early April to previous years.

    So far, there are promising signs that aid applications are increasing. An analysis by the National College Attainment Network found that FAFSA submissions in California have risen 11% year-over-year. Financial aid staff at Cal Poly Pomona, CSU Bakersfield and UC Riverside said they have observed more FAFSA applications than in the previous year or two, suggesting a return to normal after complications with the new FAFSA.  

    But financial aid officials said Trump’s call to close the Department of Education has led some families to mistakenly conclude that federal student aid is no longer available, discouraging them from applying. Officials are working to counter that misinformation.

    Chad Morris, the director of financial aid and scholarships at CSU Bakersfield, has a simple message to families questioning whether federal aid will be reduced or delayed: Apply anyway. “Take the steps as if there won’t be any disruption,” he said. 

    Cal Poly Pomona is also trying to keep students focused on the here-and-now basics: The Department of Education is still operational; Pell Grants and federal student loans are protected by the law and are still available; students should apply as usual.

    “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Jessica Wagoner, the university’s senior associate vice president for enrollment management and services, “but what we can do is tell (students) what’s going on now.”

    Those soothing messages could be muddied by the loaded choice facing students who are eligible for federal aid as U.S. citizens or permanent residents, but who have spouses or parents who are undocumented immigrants. Students from such mixed-status families may have particular apprehension about whether data submitted through the FAFSA could be used for immigration enforcement purposes, though federal law prevents the U.S. Department of Education from using information students enter into the FAFSA for a purpose other than determining a student’s aid.

    University of California students have sued the Education Department, accusing it of turning over sensitive federal student aid data to members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. A federal judge in March blocked DOGE from accessing private data housed at the Education Department. 

    “When students are completing the FAFSA, they need to really look at the risk factor that they may take, especially mixed-status families,” said Jose Aguilar, the executive director of UC Riverside’s financial aid office. “But at the end of the day, if they are eligible for these federal grants and programs, I would encourage them to apply through the FAFSA.”

    UC Riverside has already started sending new students preliminary aid award letters. Its students receive about $79 million in Pell Grants, another $3 million from federal work study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant combined, and an additional $70 million in federal direct subsidized student loans, Aguilar said.

    Given the swings in federal education policy this spring, some university officials are starting to think about how they might respond if federal aid is delayed. DeBoni of CSU Channel Islands said her campus is “actively preparing contingency measures.” The university could extend internal deadlines for students to accept admissions offers or apply for scholarships, she said, and institutional scholarships could help to fund students’ expenses.

    At Cal Poly Pomona, Wagoner said the university could give students waiting for aid similar leeway. But the university, where almost 44% of students receive a Pell Grant, would face “a very big challenge” in the unlikely event of an abrupt drop in Pell dollars, Wagoner added. “I don’t know if we — if any institution — could supplement that loss.”





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