FAFSA Issues Hit Iowa Universities; Students Still Struggle to Pay Tuition

AMES — While more “post-mortem” analysis is needed to determine the full impact of the massive delays and confusion that befell the government’s failed attempt to roll out a revised application for federal student financial aid last semester, admissions directors at Iowa’s public universities spoke last week about the implications for their campuses, applicants and returning students.

“This week, we still identified about 200 current students on our campus who have completed the FAFSA, received an offer of financial aid, but are still having trouble distributing their financial aid and are unable to pay their tuition,” University of Iowa Associate Vice Chancellor and Executive Director of Admissions Kirk Kluver told the Board of Trustees during its meeting last week in Ames.

“We have worked with them individually to resolve these issues and have waived any late fees that may be associated with late tuition payments.”

Although Kluver did not provide details about which students are still having trouble getting financial aid — or the specific issues they are facing — admissions officers at Iowa’s public university system said delays, confusion, obstacles and problems with completing the FAFSA seem to affect out-of-state and international applicants more than Iowans.

Officials said that was seen in more out-of-state people waiting later in the cycle — until funding and scholarships were awarded — to accept admission offers from universities.

And at the University of Northern Iowa — which has a higher percentage of low-income and first-generation families — “the delays have really impacted our students,” said UNI Admissions Director Terri Crumley.

“Our advisors tend to have really special contact with Pell Grant recipients because we know they need that extra help,” she said. “And the lack of data to know who those students were, the lack of data to know which students had filed the FAFSA and which students had not filed the FAFSA, was very problematic for a significant period of time.”

Making up for the delays has required significant work at all three campuses, including Iowa State University, where associate vice president and executive director of admissions Katherine Suski said, “The delays in the FAFSA application have had a number of downstream impacts.”

“Until we had the financial data, we couldn’t award many of the university’s scholarships.”

Suski added that on the positive side, Iowa candidates seemed to react differently than most candidates nationwide — given the lower tuition at public institutions for Iowa students.

“My interpretation is that students were willing to commit early and without financial aid packages because of the high value Iowa State offers as a regents university,” she said. “Even without knowing their financial aid awards, they knew their education at Iowa State would be affordable.”

Still, with about 40 percent of Regent University’s undergraduate population coming from outside Iowa — the highest percentage in at least a decade — the influx of delayed decisions from out-of-state applicants has impacted campuses in a number of ways, including enrollment and budgeting, housing management, course administration and orientation attendance.

“Late evenings and weekends”

While the previous cycle saw the FAFSA application go live on October 1, 2022 — student information was sent to institutions by November 2022, and awards were sent in mid-February 2023 — this latest FAFSA application cycle did not begin until December 30, 2023, and even then, there were issues.

Universities only began receiving information about students in mid-March, which prevented awards from being paid out within the standard deadline.

“If you go back to early March, we still haven’t received any financial aid documents from high school seniors,” said UI’s Kluver, who said his school has received application records and thousands of accepted offers of admission but has no idea how many will actually enroll after receiving offers of aid.

“There were weeks in the spring where we were concerned that enrollment would be too low, and there were also weeks where we had real concerns that it would be too high, which could create significant problems on our campus in terms of housing, orientation and course availability,” Kluver told the regents.

Finally he said: “Everything worked out.”

The University of Iowa enrolled an “optimal” 5,208 freshmen and 1,085 transfer students — bringing the total enrollment on campus to 30,779, and its five-year plan for steady growth is to enroll 33,000.

“But our people had to work late nights and weekends to get offers of financial assistance as quickly as possible,” he said.

Kluver said the university received the first batch of student financial documents on March 12, and the team sent out the first round of financial aid offers on April 16.

“This was a record turnaround time for our campus,” he said. “And we believe we are the first Big Ten university to receive financial aid offers from students.”

ISU — which ultimately accepted a freshman class of 5,906 students, for a total of 30,432 students — gathered “all comers” from financial aid and admissions staff in late April to send award letters to about 16,000 admitted freshmen.

According to Director of Student Financial Aid Chad Olson, they had all the envelopes filled out and sealed within a few hours.

UI’s Kluver said that if it weren’t for the long hours, extra effort and flexibility, “I have no doubt that the consequences of the delays could have been very serious.”

“It is no longer a benefit for these families”

Nationally, the number of 2024 high school seniors who completed the FAFSA was down 9 percent from a year ago, with Iowa seeing a nearly 10 percent drop from a year earlier, according to the National College Attainment Network.

As of Sept. 13, 52 percent of 2024 high school graduates nationwide had completed the FAFSA, compared with 58.4 percent during the same period in 2023. At the state level, 49 percent of Iowa high school seniors in their 2024 class had completed the FAFSA — even though the UI admissions office reported an 8 percent increase in first-year applications.

Still, Kluver said his university sees some consistency among enrolled students.

“If you look at our enrolled freshman class, 87 to 86 percent of those students filed the FAFSA,” he said. “That number was 87 percent last year. We’re also pleased that the percentage of our freshmen receiving Pell Grants has increased; 19.3 percent of our incoming freshmen received Pell Grants. Last year, that was 17.4 percent of our freshman class.”

University admissions officers have expressed concerns that problems with the FAFSA form will particularly affect certain groups — including students who want to be the first in their family to go to college.

“That’s why we were very pleased to retain the 20 percent of first-in-family students who went to college in our entering class this year,” Kluver said. “We also had some serious concerns about retention. As students were thinking about returning for their sophomore year, their financial aid offer would have a significant impact on that decision. And because of the work of our team, we were able to provide financial aid offers to returning students in April.”

Admissions staff told the regents they were concerned about how some of the changes to the FAFSA formula could affect specific groups of people they serve — including those with agricultural and small business assets.

“There were certainly concerns, especially around agricultural assets and small business assets, that some students who might have benefited in the past might not be able to,” Kluver said, while changes to benefits for siblings studying at university were also a concern.

“We were really concerned about that — that for a lot of kids in college, there were no longer benefits for those families,” he said. “That would particularly impact current students who may have received some form of federal aid that would no longer be eligible.

“And we certainly had a lot of those students in our financial aid offices this year trying to find solutions when they had the new formula and their aid was significantly reduced.”

All three admissions staff members said they would like to see a return to a more standard schedule for the new cycle, with the expectation that the FAFSA will open on Dec. 1 and student information will begin being reported later that month.

“We will be very happy with this process if we start accepting student financial aid applications in mid-December,” Kluver said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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