Enrolling in college has been especially fraught this year, and financial aid experts are raising new concerns about the unforgiving timeline students could face if they rely on federal dollars to attend school this summer.
While most collegegoers register solely for the fall and spring terms, some, especially nontraditional and low-income students, depend on summer school to finish their degrees as quickly as possible and save money. Under changes made by the U.S. Education Department in 2017, those students are eligible for year-round government assistance.
But this year, a congressional mandate to streamline the process of applying for college financial aid threw the whole system into disarray. Students across the country reported widespread troubles filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, while the government botched crucial data that colleges needed to make aid offers.
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Though the situation has improved over the past month – FAFSAs are now being processed in one to three days, the Education Department says – many colleges are still far behind their typical schedules. The disorder has forced schools, in some cases, to rely on their own systems to calculate costs for certain students who want to enroll this summer and are eligible for Pell Grants, a need-based federal financial aid program.
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But the timetable leaves little room for error, some experts say.
“We are extremely worried about anyone who wants to enroll in college starting in the summer term and beyond,” said MorraLee Keller, the senior director of strategic programming at the National College Attainment Network. “The FAFSA fiasco has not left any part of higher education untouched.”
In a statement to USA TODAY, the Education Department said the technicalities over when colleges choose to access Pell money will not change the amount of federal financial aid for which students are ultimately eligible. The agency said Friday it had processed over 10 million FAFSA forms.
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How a small Kansas college is faring
For people like Brenda Hicks, making sure Pell funding comes through this summer for students without a financial cushion has been frenetic.
Southwestern College, a small private school in Winfield, Kansas, where she serves as the director of financial aid, is one of a minority of higher education institutions that bases its summer aid on students’ next-year FAFSA data. It’s always a scramble to make sure those students get the money they qualify for, she said. Summer students at Southwestern are often older and have other responsibilities – jobs and kids, for instance – which can distract them from filling out all the necessary paperwork on time.
“I was very concerned,” Hicks told USA TODAY.
Southwestern’s incoming Pell-eligible class is relatively small – about 100 students. Disbursing aid to them last week went mostly smoothly, Hicks said, though a few students have had trouble filling out their FAFSAs from the start. After lots of back and forth with the Education Department, one summer-enrolled student just received a federal financial aid estimate Friday. Summer classes started earlier this month.
Because of problems with his FAFSA, another student at Southwestern still doesn’t have an idea of how much federal financial aid he could get. Though her office can’t disburse aid to him yet, Hicks said she is working closely with the billing staff to make sure he isn’t penalized for unpaid tuition or fees while his situation is pending.
“All the things that are happening this year are making it harder for me to stay on top of that, and make sure summer people are getting the attention they are due,” she said. “We’re just trying to hug him through it.”
Hicks said she worries about similar situations at larger schools, where there’s a greater chance some students could fall through the cracks this summer.
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It’s unclear to experts precisely how many colleges are working on a tighter timetable for summer financial aid this year. Thankfully, the majority of schools award their summer aid based on the prior year’s FAFSA, according to Jill Desjean, a senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
The Education Department did not provide USA TODAY an estimate of how many students received Pell Grants starting in the summer term of a comparable year. In the 2021-22 school year, approximately 700,000 students in total received the grants on a year-round basis, according to the agency. Much of that aid likely began in the fall term.
Students with special financial circumstances could be most at risk of having to forgo school this summer, Desjean said. That’s because colleges still don’t have the ability to appeal the government’s financial aid calculations – a decision schools make in unusual circumstances, such as when a student is facing a major medical condition.
That corrected information won’t be processed in large quantities by the feds until July, the Education Department has said. Until then, some schools are making their own unofficial calculations for students enrolled for the summer term. The Education Department is allowing them to disburse preliminary aid based on those estimates.
Later this summer, schools will have to compare the amount of money they already started giving students with the government’s official numbers.
“Hopefully, they are the same,” Desjean said.
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.