Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona appeared before lawmakers Wednesday to make the Department's case for next year's funding, but lawmakers from both parties had other things in mind. Ta. It's this year's confusing college admissions process.
Republicans peppered him with questions about his failure to introduce a new free application form for federal student aid that derailed college admissions this year. Some of them asked whether government agencies had diverted resources from projects aimed at canceling student loans.
“There is nothing more important to the Department of Education at this time,” Cardona told the House Appropriations Committee regarding the aid form, adding that the Department is juggling multiple priorities with available resources. He said there was. “We're working on this around the clock.”
While Cardona was testifying, the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development held a separate hearing in which lawmakers from both parties argued that the aid form issue was hurting aspiring college students. did.
“This is not just a trivial list of complaints,” Justin Draeger, chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told lawmakers. “This really leads to a crisis of confidence in the Department of Education.”
Draeger said schools his organization works with have encountered two additional problems that affect the department's calculations, making as many as 40 percent of the financial records they receive so far unusable. Ta.
Since the department began using the new form in late December, bugs and design flaws have repeatedly impeded the department's processing of financial information used to calculate the federal grants it ultimately hands over to universities. Ta.
As a result, university administrators were unable to tell many students how much they could expect to pay. Many schools have postponed admission deadlines to give students time to decide which college to attend based on their financial ability.
Rachel Feldman, vice chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, testified Wednesday that her school has yet to send any formal aid offers to successful students. Normally, the offer would have been sent along with the acceptance letter by the end of March. .
Her school now hopes to send out offers of aid to students as early as the first week of May, long after the date many students would have already enrolled in other grades. she said.
Since April, the Department of Education has maintained a “Breaking News” page to regularly update progress on troubleshooting the FAFSA form. The department plans to reprocess many of the defective records sent to schools by May 1, according to an update posted Wednesday.
A Department of Education spokesperson said the agency believes it has fixed most of the major bugs in the form and that department staff are processing submitted applications within one to three days, Cardona said. also presented its timetable to lawmakers on Wednesday.
But Congress' response overshadowed many of the department's goals and underscored the precarious position Mr. Cardona found himself in this spring.
Cardona said Wednesday that although there were issues with this year's form, the new, simplified version will make the aid application process easier for students going forward.
Even in a normal year, many students eligible for aid have not applied for aid, and several Democrats said they may have faced unexpected obstacles this year and been abandoned due to incomplete application documentation. They expressed concern that it would disproportionately impact certain low-income and first-generation students. , or you may have concluded that taking out a loan is your only option to pay for college.
“This data portends a catastrophic decline in college enrollment this fall for the high school class of 2024 unless something changes very quickly,” said Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Admissions Network. I will do it,” he testified.