[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FAFSA FAIL: EXAMINING THE IMPACT ON
STUDENTS, FAMILIES, AND SCHOOLS
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HEARING
Before The
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 10, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-43
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Workforce
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Available via: edworkforce.house.gov or www.govinfo.gov
_______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
58-669 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina, Chairwoman
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT,
GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania Virginia,
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Ranking Member
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN,
JIM BANKS, Indiana Northern Mariana Islands
JAMES COMER, Kentucky FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
BURGESS OWENS, Utah MARK TAKANO, California
BOB GOOD, Virginia ALMA S. ADAMS, North Carolina
LISA McCLAIN, Michigan MARK DeSAULNIER, California
MARY MILLER, Illinois DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
MICHELLE STEEL, California PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
RON ESTES, Kansas SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
JULIA LETLOW, Louisiana LUCY McBATH, Georgia
KEVIN KILEY, California JAHANA HAYES, Connecticut
AARON BEAN, Florida ILHAN OMAR, Minnesota
ERIC BURLISON, Missouri HALEY M. STEVENS, Michigan
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ, New Mexico
JOHN JAMES, Michigan KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER, Oregon FRANK J. MRVAN, Indiana
BRANDON WILLIAMS, New York JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York
ERIN HOUCHIN, Indiana
Cyrus Artz, Staff Director
Veronique Pluviose, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
BURGESS, OWENS, Utah, Chairman
GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania FREDERICA WILSON, Florida,
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin Ranking Member
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York MARK TAKANO, California
JIM BANKS, Indiana PRAMILA,JAYAPAL, Washington
LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ, New Mexico
BOB GOOD, Virginia KATHY E. MANNING, North Carolina
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas LUCY McBATH, Georgia
JOHN JAMES, Michigan RAUL M. GRIJALVA, Arizona
LORI CHAVEZ-DeREMER, Oregon JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
ERIN HOUCHIN, Indiana GREGORIO KILILI CAMACHO SABLAN,
BRANDON WILLIAMS, New York Northern Mariana Islands
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
ALMA ADAMS, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 10, 2024................................... 1
OPENING STATEMENTS
Owens, Hon. Burgess, Chairman, Subcommittee on Higher
Education and Workforce Development........................ 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 4
Wilson, Hon. Frederica, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Higher Education and Workforce Development................. 6
Prepared statement of.................................... 16
WITNESSES
Kantrowitz, Mark, President, Cerebly, Inc.................... 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Draeger, Justin S., President and CEO, National Association
of Student Financial Aid Administrators.................... 27
Prepared statement of.................................... 29
Cook, Kim, CEO, National College Attainment Network.......... 46
Prepared statement of.................................... 48
Feldman, Rachelle, Vice Provost of Enrollment, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill................................ 56
Prepared statement of.................................... 58
ADDITIONAL SUBMISSIONS
Ranking Member Wilson:
Article from the Tampa Bay Times titled ``Florida student
aid requests plunge. How many will delay or skip
collge?''.............................................. 8
Courtney, Hon. Joe, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Connecticut:
Letter dated April 9, 2024, from Mitchell College........ 88
FAFSA FAIL: EXAMINING THE IMPACT ON
STUDENTS, FAMILIES, AND SCHOOLS
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce
Development,
Committee on Education and The Workforce,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:20 a.m., in
Room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Burgess Owens
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Owens, Thompson, Grothman,
Stefanik, Banks, Smucker, Good, Moran, Williams, Houchin, Foxx,
Wilson, Jayapal, Leger Fernandez, McBath, Courtney, Bonamici,
Adams, and Scott.
Staff present: Cyrus Artz, Staff Director; Nick Barley,
Deputy Communications Director; Mindy Barry, General Counsel;
Hans Bjontegard, Legislative Assistant; Solomon Chen,
Professional Staff Member; Isabel Foster, Press Assistant;
Daniel Fuenzalida, Staff Assistant; Amy Raaf Jones, Director of
Education and Human Services Policy; Georgie Littlefair, Clerk;
Hannah Matesic, Director of Member Services and Coalitions;
Audra McGeorge, Communications Director; Rebecca Powell, Staff
Assistant; Mary Christina Riley, Professional Staff Member;
Maura Williams, Director of Operations; Brittany Alston,
Minority Operations Assistant; Amaris Benavidez, Minority
Professional Staff; Rashage Green, Minority Director of
Education Policy & Counsel; Christian Haines, Minority General
Counsel; Joan Hoyte, Minority NLRB Detailee; Emanual Kimble,
Minority Professional Staff; Stephanie Lalle, Minority
Communications Director; Raiyana Malone, Minority Press
Secretary; Veronique Pluviose, Minority Staff Director; Swetha
Ramachandran, Minority Intern; Dhrtvan Sherman, Minority
Committee Research Assistant; Jamar Tolbert, Minority Intern;
Banyon Vassar, Minority IT Administrator; Natalia Wilson,
Minority Intern; Samantha Wilkerson, Minority CBCF Fellow.
Chairman Owens. The Subcommittee on Higher Education and
Workforce Development will come to order. I note that a quorum
is present. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to call
a recess at any time. Welcome to today's hearing titled FAFSA
Fail: Examining the Impact on Students, Families and Schools.
When it comes time for students across America to apply for
college, the free application for Federal student aid, FAFSA,
is a critical tool. For many, FAFSA is the only access to
postsecondary education. It opens doors and provides financial
assistance to individuals seeking to pursue their academic
ambitions regardless of background.
In 2020 legislators and policymakers sought to make the
process even more accessible by passing a FAFSA Simplification
Act. With the financial burden of colleges growing each year,
it was incredibly important the form ease the FAFSA process for
families. The new law streamlined the long, complex application
process. In some cases, students could see the number of
questions on the forms shrink from 8 to 18 from possible 100 to
103 on their previous FAFSA application.
However, we have learned over the past 3 years the Biden
administration greatest success is a failure at everything it
attempts to do. Today the Committee is poised to--for a
familiar challenge, oversight. Despite our efforts, the
Department of Education's FAFSA rollout was marred in delays
and dysfunction.
Without accountability, the Department of Education botched
implementation threatens to damage students, families and
institutions. First off, the FAFSA Simplification has been a
Federal law since the Biden administration day one, yet it did
not--yet that did not stop the Department of Education from
pursuing 5 months--for putting 5 months in the very short
launch date of July 2023, to a soft launch on December 2023. It
is 5 months.
The Department of Education did roll out the new FAFSA.
Students were met with sporadic glitches, never ending queries,
and a myriad of technical issues. Some students could not
complete the form at all. For those who managed to complete the
form, the transmission of key numbers to schools was slow.
Without timely data, schools cannot forecast budgets, or
prepare financial aid packages. Compounding the issue, the
Department of Education has made multiple data errors,
rendering hundreds of thousands of records unusable for
schools. Unfortunately, this may only be the tip of the
iceberg.
New errors are seemingly revealed every week, and it may be
even a new one by the time this hearing is over. These failures
are not just impacting the taxpayer who always pay the costs of
bureaucratic dysfunction. Institutions could be seen as an
estimated 20 percent drop in enrollment this year.
Low-income students who require access to aid are going to
be the hardest hit. These delays do not even account for next
year's FAFSA, which will almost certainly not be ready by
October. This is unfathomable to me that the Office of Federal
Student Aid received over 2 billion dollars last year, so in
essence, the American taxpayer has paid 2 billion to give their
children a year or two of chaos and anxiety.
FAFSA was created in 1992, with the AGA Reauthorization
Act. We have had 32 years of a functioning system that serves
hundreds of millions of students at thousands of institutions.
Within 3 years the Biden administration Department of Education
has managed to bring the educational history to a possible game
changing crisis.
What is the Biden's answer to this debacle? He is asking
for an addition 625 million dollars added to the Office of
Federal Student Aid's budget. We are left to conclude that
instead of doing their job it was tasked to do, which is
helping over 18 million students, or potential students apply
for FAFSA, this administration opted to waste months of time
and energy on a re-election strategy, and our unconstitutional
Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme.
Our answer to this, not a dollar more until we figure this
out. Students, schools and institutions deserve answers. It is
our responsibility as Congress, to hold the executive branch
accountable. I look forward to working together with members on
this Committee to learn from this botched rollout, and to
ensure the smooth, clear, and honest FAFSA process moving
forward. I yield to the Ranking Member for her opening
statement.
[The statement of Chairman Owens follows:]
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Ms. Wilson. Thank you so much, Chairman Owens. Thank you to
the witnesses for coming today. We know that a college degree
is the surest pathway to economic mobility in America.
Unfortunately, for many low-income students, particularly those
at HBCUs, such as Florida Memorial University in south Florida
where I live, the cost of a college degree remains out of reach
without Federal student aid.
For years, the Pell Grants have helped our want to be
somebody's students achieve the promise of higher education.
This is why in 2020 democrats and republicans in Congress
passed the FAFSA Simplification Act, which aimed to streamline
the free application for Federal student assistance form, and
expand student aid eligibility, especially for those who
usually would not be able to afford to go to college.
Sadly, the hold up with this law raised questions about
whether going to college in the fall is even doable for those
who cannot foot the bill. Students needed their financial aid
information months ago to make college decisions, yet many
still do not have that information today.
I would like to remind everyone that college decision day,
which should be a joyous event where students declare where
they will go in the fall, is May 1st, less than a month away.
We do not want children all dressed up on that day with no
place to go. I even have a signing day in my district where the
boys in the 5,000 role models of excellence sign, just like
athletes, but they are signing for academic scholarships.
Guess what? Many students will not even have what they need
to make that choice. Additionally, this has made things more
complicated for colleges and high school counselors as well.
They, just like students, have had to quickly adapt to the
frequent changes from the Department of Education.
These setbacks put decades of progress in jeopardy,
slamming the brakes on efforts to widen access to higher
education, and financial stability for students of color, first
generation students, and those from low-income backgrounds.
According to the National College Attainment Network, only
32.3 percent of students from low-income high schools completed
the FAFSA form, a 32.9 percent decrease from the previous year,
and only 32.2 percent of students in high-minority high schools
have completed the form, a 33.3 percent decrease from the
previous year.
This stark reality directly imposes the intended purpose of
the Simplification Act serving as a slap in the face to
students wanting to be somebody and achieve the promise of
higher education. While I agree that holding the Department
accountable, and investigate its mishandling is crucial, our
immediate priority--immediate priority must be ensuring
students, and their families have the necessary resources to
make informed decisions about their future.
We must also ensure that schools and organizations are
prepared to assist them. The clock is ticking, and students
need answers now. I would like to request inclusion in the
record the Tampa Bay Times, Tuesday, April 9, 2024 entitled
Florida Student Aid Request Launch, How Many Would Delay or
Even Skip College?
I want to note that there is a graph showing Federal
student aid applications were lowest among Florida's poorest
students.
Chairman Owens. No objection.
[The information of Ms. Wilson follows:]
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Ms. Wilson. I yield back.
[The statement of Ranking Member Wilson follows:]
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Chairman Owens. Thank you. Pursuant to Committee Rule 8-C,
all members who wish to insert written statements into the
record may do so by submitting them to the Committee Clerk
electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5 p.m., 14 days
after this hearing, which is April 24, 2024.
Without objection, the hearing record will remain open for
14 days to allow such statements and materials referenced
during the hearing to be submitted to the official hearing
record. I would like now to turn our time to introduce our four
distinguished witnesses. Our first witness is Mr. Mark
Kantrowitz, who is President of Cerebly, Institute--Cerebly
yes, Cerebly, which is located--sorry about that, located in
Skoki, Illinois.
Our next witness is Mr. Justin Draeger, who is the
President and CEO of National Association of Student Financial
Aid Administrators, which is located in Washington, DC. Our
third witness is Ms. Kim Cook, who is CEO of the National
College Attainment Network located in Washington, DC.
Our final witness is Rachelle Feldman, who is the Vice
Provost for Enrollment at University of North Carolina Chapel
Hill, which is located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Thank
you so much. We thank the witnesses for being here today, and
for your testimony.
Pursuant to Committee Rules, I would like to ask each to
limit your oral presentation to a 5-minute summary of your
written statement. I would also like to remind the witnesses to
be aware of their responsibility to provide accurate
information to the subcommittee. I would like to start off with
recognizing Mr. Kantrowitz.
STATEMENT OF MR. MARK KANTROWITZ, PRESIDENT, CEREBLY, INC.,
SKOKIE, ILLINOIS
Mr. Kantrowitz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for
convening this hearing on FAFSA Fail, Examining the Impact on
Students, Families and Schools, and for inviting me to testify
before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education and
Workforce Development this morning.
My name is Mark Kantrowitz. In 1996, I developed a
prototype of an online FAFSA that led to the FAFSA being made
available on the web. Since then, I have provided public
comments on draft FAFSAs every year. I wrote a best-selling
book about the FAFSA. I have served as publisher of several
consumer facing websites about financial aid.
My mission is to deliver practical information, advice, and
tools to students and their families so they can make smarter,
more informed decisions about planning and paying for college.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to share my insights with
the Committee today.
The rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA has been plagued by
delays, errors, and communication failures. This has been a
frustrating, impossible process for students, families,
colleges and scholarship providers. There have been numerous
missed implementation deadlines, long delays, broken promises,
clogged call centers and IT errors.
There has been a lack of transparency with the challenges
and delays being portrayed in an overly optimistic fashion. The
goal of FAFSA simplification was to make it easier for students
and their families to file the FAFSA, thereby eliminating it as
a barrier to college access and success by low-and moderate-
income students, first generation college students, under
represented students and other at risk students.
The launch of the new form has been a disaster in this
regard. Let us review how we got here. Congress passed the
FAFSA Simplification Act on December 27, 2020, effective for
the 2023-24 award year. When the U.S. Department of Education
said that they could not implement the simplified FAFSA as
scheduled, Congress passed a FAFSA Simplification Corrections
Act on March 15, 2022, to delay implementation until 2024-25.
The contract for the simplified FAFSA was not awarded until
March 2022, 15 months after passage of the FAFSA Simplification
Act. The U.S. Department of Education did not launch the FAFSA
until December 30 of 2023, 3 months after the usual October 1st
start date. The FAFSA was open for only half an hour that day.
Problems prevented many students and families from filing
the new FAFSA, 15 of these problems remain unresolved. When
students and families called the Federal Student Aid
Information Center for help, they spent hours on hold, calls
and email messages went unanswered.
The U.S. Department of Education did not initially
implement inflationary adjustments in the FAFSA's financial aid
formulas as required by the FAFSA Simplification Act, despite
being told about this problem in May 2023. They did not decide
to fix the problem until January 2024, after learning that
middle income students would lose an average of about $1,600.00
in financial aid, and high income students an average of
$4,600.00.
On January 30 of 2024, the day colleges were supposed to
start receiving processed FAFSA data, the U.S. Department of
Education announced another unprecedented 6-week delay. When
FAFSA processing began in mid-March 2024, applicants were not
able to make corrections yielding high error rates. There were
also errors that affected about a quarter of all FAFSAs, such
as errors in the calculation of dependent student assets and
errors in tax data.
Applicants will have just a few weeks to make the most
momentous decision of their lives. There are 2.8 million fewer
FAFSAs filed this year as compared with the same time last
year. A 15 percent drop overall. The drop in college enrollment
may be worse than during the pandemic, causing some colleges to
close.
Several factors contributed to the FAFSA fiasco. Rather
than just removed questions to simplify the FAFSA, the U.S.
Department of Education decided to change everything,
everywhere all at once, including an overhaul of the antiquated
FAFSA processing infrastructure. At the same time there was the
restart of repayment for Federal student loans, proposals for
student loan forgiveness and the new save income driven
repayment plan.
There was inadequate testing of the new FAFSA before
launch. Testing was an afterthought, not part of the original
development plan. More time, staffing, funding and testing, and
greater prioritization of existing staff and funding might have
helped. Mr. Chairman, I once again thank you and the committee
for taking an interest in the development of the simplified
FAFSA, and for inviting me to share my thoughts on the matter.
I would be happy to answer any questions you may have on
this or other topics.
[The Statement of Mr. Kantrowitz follows:]
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Chairman Owens. Thank you, Mr. Kantrowitz, I appreciate it.
My next witness will be Mr. Draeger.
STATEMENT OF MR. JUSTIN DRAEGER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL
ASSOCIATION OF STUDENT FINANCIAL AID ADMINISTRATORS,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Draeger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Owens,
Ranking Member Wilson, and distinguished members of the
Committee. My name is Justin Draeger. I represent NASFA, who
represents 3,000 college, university, career school and
financial aid offices and today I will be giving their
perspective. I want to take us back in time a couple months to
January 30, 2024.
That day will live in the collective trauma of most
financial aid offices across the country. That was the day that
schools were expecting to receive roughly 3 million FAFSA files
from the U.S. Department of Education. To be clear, to the
students who had completed the FAFSA up to that point it was
anything but smooth sailing.
They had already gone through a form that was only
available at certain times of the day and riddled with glitches
to put it mildly. By January 30, that was the day the
Department had told schools that they would start to receive
FAFSA files, and schools were already months behind at that
point.
They need those files so they can start to put together
financial aid packages, things like Pell Grants and
supplemental grants, and need based scholarships, and State
grants and work study. You can understand that they were very
anxious on this day to get started. At that point in the
process schools had already started sending out early
admissions.
Schools were in the coming weeks going to start sending out
regular admissions. By that point students had already started
receiving admissions decisions. What they did not know, and
what they still do not know today is how they are going to pay
for it.
You will understand that on January 30th as they were
anxiously waiting at their desks for those FAFSA files, they
were aghast when what they instead received was a notice from
the Department of Education that FAFSA files would be delayed
for another 2 months.
Now January 30th was not the first day of bad news. It was
the straw that broke the camel's back and turned this rollout
from a hardship into a crisis. January 30th communication, that
communication unfortunately fits a pattern that has been
repeated throughout this launch, and it is negatively impacting
every school, every student and every family in your district.
What is that pattern? Well, it is a last-minute
communication from the Department of Education throwing schools
and students and families into chaos. It is drastic and far-
reaching policy decisions making everyone do 90 degree turns,
if not 180-degree directional changes, and it is bad news
buried in celebratory publicity. That is usually stuff that is
reserved for press releases, and that is fine.
I come from the world of PR and communications, but stuff
that is usually in press releases has now made its way into
operational releases. This is not just a petty list of
grievances. This really adds up to a crisis of credibility for
the Department of Education.
That brings me to today. My written testimony lays out with
painstaking detail where we are, but I want to wrap up with
really two points. Overhauling the FAFSA was a big deal. It was
a big operational lift. It was necessary and it was important,
but maybe the thing I want to highlight most of all it was
congressionally mandated, bipartisanly.
When Congress gives any administration a legislative
mandate, it should be the top priority of that administration.
My second point is we are in an awful place today. Schools have
all the FAFSA information they need from the Department of
Education, but the Department estimates that 20 percent of the
files that schools have are riddled with errors.
Another 20 percent of the files on top of that on average
do not have the numbers that the financial aid offices need to
actually calculate any awards. That means 40 percent of the
FAFSA files that schools have are not usable to calculate
financial aid offers for students. That is on average, some
schools are higher.
Here is the hard truth, and I do not take any pleasure in
being here to say this today, but when you have a crisis of
credibility, schools do not trust that more errors will not be
found tomorrow, that the data that they have today is credible,
or that guidance will not change tomorrow.
Schools are stuck in paralysis, and not because the
Department is purposely misleading anyone, but because Ed
itself may not know where the next errors are to be found. I am
glad to report the Department is reporting more frequently.
They are doing more webinars, they are throwing more resources
at this, and as of just last night their communications are
more direct.
I am not here to say that all hope is lost. The form is
better. I can say it because I have seen it work. I hope that
we can salvage this year. I am looking forward to the
conversation that follows these testimoneys, and thank you for
holding this hearing.
[The Statement of Mr. Draeger follows:]
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Chairman Owens. Thank you, Mr. Draeger, I appreciate that.
I will now recognize Ms. Cook.
STATEMENT OF MS. KIM COOK, CEO, NATIONAL COLLEGE ATTAINMENT
NETWORK, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Cook. Chairman Owens, Ranking Member Wilson, and
members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the invitation to
speak this morning. NCAN prioritizes FAFSA support and
completion because it aligns so strongly with our vision that
all students, especially first-generation students, students
from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, and those
from low-income backgrounds, have an equitable opportunity to
achieve social and economic mobility through higher education.
NCAN has long advocated for FAFSA simplification and built
a coalition of cross sector partner organizations to champion
it. Completion of the FAFSA is one of the best predictors of
whether a high school senior will go on to college. Seniors who
complete the FAFSA are 84 percent more likely to immediately
enroll in postsecondary education.
Our policy goals have been to simplify the form, improve
early awareness, and expand Pell Grant eligibility and take
out. Encouraging increases in postsecondary enrollment and
completion, and lowering errors and verification burden for
applicants. The 2019 Future Act and 2020 FAFSA Simplification
Act brought us comprehensive reform, widely talked about as a
simplified FAFSA.
According to the Department of Education, 600,000 more
students will become eligible for Pell Grants in 2025. We began
the school year with high hopes for this better FAFSA. Instead,
students and families, and the advisors and counselors who
support them, have experienced FAFSA technical malfunctions, a
botched ID account creation system that has many students from
mixed status families still unable to contribute parent
information to the form.
A call center with hour long waits, dropped calls due to
volume and incorrect information, and a painfully slow ramp up
of applicant data transfers to waiting financial aid offices,
who now await reprocessing of up to 20 percent of applicants
given formula errors.
Open issues remain, including no functionality for upwards
of 20 percent of students who need to make corrections, some
resulting from known issues. An unknown number of paper forms
still have no test timeline for processing. No data has been
shared yet on the status of renewal FAFSA forms.
The delayed opening and processing and reprocessing of
applications means most high school seniors have yet to receive
an aid offer. They are being asked to commit by May 1. Our
greatest fear is that they will decide they cannot.
Students have done all the right things, working hard for
12 years and navigating all the steps in their senior year of
high school to continue to college, but they have no idea how,
or if they can afford those next steps on their postsecondary
path.
The data portend a catastrophic decline in college
enrollment this fall for the high school class of 2024, unless
something changes very quickly.
About 30 percent fewer FAFSAs have been submitted through
March 22d than through the same date last year. More than one
million more FAFSA submissions are needed from high school
seniors to match last year's submission rates, which we had
hoped to exceed this year.
Submission gaps are exacerbated in high schools serving
large percentages of students from low-end communities, and in
schools with high minority enrollment. NCAN projects that we
could reach the June 30 milestone with anywhere from 100,000 to
700,000 fewer FAFSA completions this year.
These numbers must serve as an early warning sign. The last
time we saw such dramatically low numbers was in the height of
the pandemic, that notably brought on a crushing 6.8 percent
drop in immediate college enrollment for the Class of 2020,
with significant decreases for Black, Latino and Native
American students.
Postsecondary enrollment still has not fully recovered. It
is still possible to inject momentum into this cycle. Despite
the challenges, tireless, fierce student advocates, and the
students and families they support, have rolled the proverbial
rock up the hill. Despite persistent setbacks, they remain
committed to our students and the promise of the better FAFSA.
We applaud and appreciate states who adopted universal
FAFSA completion. We are grateful to the State aid programs and
institutions that have delayed their enrollment dates, and held
back aid for those impacted by reprocessing. NCAN has joined
the efforts by quickly standing up and raising an additional
1.3 million dollars in private commitments for digital media
FAFSA completion campaign.
The education department's FAFSA college support strategy
gives needed help to under-sourced institutions, many of whom
enroll our students. We urge the Biden administration to allow
flexible use of those funds for community-based organizations,
schools districts, and State agencies to continue to work.
We also appreciate next week's FAFSA Week of Action, in
which the Department is raising awareness and holding
completion events. We remain committed to working with you for
our students.
The equity stakes here are monumental, as is the potential
impact on postsecondary enrollment. I would be happy to answer
any questions here, or in individual up. Thank you again for
this opportunity.
[The Statement of Ms. Cook follows:]
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Chairman Owens. Thank you, Ms. Cook. Appreciate that. Last,
not least, I would like to recognize Ms. Feldman.
STATEMENT OF MS. RACHELLE FELDMAN, VICE PROVOST, ENROLLMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL, CHAPEL HILL, NORTH
CAROLINA
Ms. Feldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you
today. I am Rachelle Feldman. I am the Vice Provost of
Enrollment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
and also a member of NASFA FAFSA Simplification Implementation
Working Group, that is a handful.
At Carolina, we are the Nation's oldest and first public
university with a mission to educate the leaders of tomorrow
from every corner of our State and beyond. We are proud to be
both need blind in admissions, and meet the full demonstrated
financial need of every undergraduate.
We provide an excellent education at an affordable price
for all. To do that, we rely not only on the generosity of our
State and our donors, but especially on Federal student aid,
and we cannot fulfill that promise without a working FAFSA.
In September 2020, with great optimism, I testified before
the Senate Health Committee in favor of FAFSA Simplification,
and I am excited about the possibilities for the future.
Unfortunately, the rollout of better FAFSA has been
disappointing. My colleagues and I feel discouraged,
frustrated, but most of all worried about the impact this will
have on students' ability to attend college, and achieve
economic and social mobility. Today I am going to focus on what
it is like on the ground.
My colleagues have talked about how rocky the FAFSA launch
was when it came 3 months late. Meanwhile, we at schools were
not receiving any data from the submitted forms, and struggled
to help families and students complete.
The near peer advisors in our Carolina College Advising
Corps, who tried to hold their usual FAFSA completion events
for families and students in under resourced high schools were
frustrated, and often stymied by Federal systems that were
down, or just not functioning as expected.
Today, 6 months behind our regular schedule, we have
received only about 60 percent of the records we normally would
at this time of year. The files we received Friday from the
Department telling us how many of our files needed reprocessing
constituted 48 percent of the records we can match, and another
20 percent are rejected because of lack of signature or other
known issues.
We feel like we are flying blind without a clear path, and
we have yet to release a single, official aid offer, despite
having released our admissions decisions. Policy changes are
also causing whiplash. More than once the Department has issued
guidance, only to have it reversed or revised within days. We
have done, undone, and redone work more times this year than I
can count.
Our financial aid professionals in schools feel like the
rug keeps getting yanked out from under them, and if they feel
like that, imagine how our first-generation families and
students feel. Also frustrating is how tone deaf some of the
communications from the Department have been.
On March 15th, when most schools had received at most a
handful of records, Secretary Cardona wrote a letter to school
Presidents that in part implied schools were the ones not
ready, and responsible for the delays in aid offers.
At that exact same time, colleagues were reporting hold
times of over 3 hours with the Department to try to get help,
or being put on a priority callback list, only to wait weeks
for a response.
The electronic announcements we were receiving that we rely
on for guidance, read more like press releases. As one of my
colleagues said, enough with the sunshine and rainbows. Higher
education is too important to be a political football. I know
that each of you are here serving on this Committee because you
care about our students, their families and their future.
You do not want doubletalk or sales pitches any more than
we do. What we all need is straight talk, and timely solutions
that get students money to go to college. The continuing delays
hurt our most vulnerable students and families the most.
Millions of students rely on the support they receive from
guidance counselors, or outreach programs in order to not just
complete the FAFSA, but make crucial college decisions.
As time marches on, those students are going to graduate
and not have those resources. We cannot leave behind talented
minds simply because they rely on financial aid to go to
college. We in the field are exhausted.
We know that there are many dedicated career staff at Ed
working long, hard hours, who are also trying to fix the
issues, and they are frustrated, exhausted, and frankly,
probably embarrassed at this point.
We are already worrying about next year. Will there be more
delays? Will we leave more young people behind? Will I be able
to enroll the students that are so key to my mission? We are
facing a crisis of enrollment and of trust. I will conclude
this testimony as I did in 2020 with hope.
Once we solve the problems with the FAFSA I think we are in
for a better world, and financially being a lifeline for
millions of students, we have to make this work. Schools and
the outreach communities stand ready to do all we can to make
things better and help students.
We appreciate your help making sure everyone can benefit
from the promise of FAFSA simplification. Thank you so much for
your attention. I am happy to answer any questions you may
have.
[The Statement of Ms. Feldman follows:]
GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT
Chairman Owens. Thank you so much, Ms. Feldman, I
appreciate that. Under Committee Rule 9, we will now begin
questioning the witnesses under the 5-minute rule. I will begin
the process.
The Department's FAFSA delays and errors are not victimless
crimes. At the end of the day students, families and states and
institutions are anxious and frustrated because the Department
has failed to do the job. Mr. Draeger, in your testimony you
give several examples of the Department sweeping the FAFSA
problems under the rug.
Why do you think the Department continues to downplay the
problems with FAFSA over the past 3 years, even though
advocates, groups and experts were sounding the alarm? By the
way, this started back in, as I read through your comments,
back in 2021, so it is now 2024, so we have moved this silence
along for quite a while. What would you say would be the reason
for that response?
Mr. Draeger. Yes. I wish I knew the answers to some of the
reasons why the Department swept, or felt like they couldn't be
forthcoming about some of the FAFSA issues. We did start
raising them early when they were missing deadlines. Some of
those early misses did not seem like the biggest deal at the
time because they were just missing a few deadlines or were not
coming out with roadmaps that we expected them to come out
with.
I think, Mr. Owens, that is a completely appropriate
question for this Committee to be asking of the Department of
Education, in its oversight function, and not really for even
political points, but to understand so we do not repeat these
mistakes in the future. It is that critical.
I can tell you some of the ramifications though, which is a
loss of confidence by institutional financial aid offices. They
do not trust necessarily that the data they have is completely
accurate, that there won't be more data issues in the future,
paralysis. We just did a poll over the last 2 days, and we have
a good number of institutions who are unsure whether they will
be able to go out and send eight offers before May 1, which is
the traditional date by which schools ask students to decide
where they will be attending.
A lot of schools have already pushed that date back by now.
Confusion in the aid office that leads to confusion among
students and families, and fear of wrongdoing by auditors and
program reviews, that with all of this rapid change in policy
guidance that schools will be left on the hook, and trying to
backtrack and explain to accreditors, program reviewers and
auditors.
This has ultimately led to this crisis of credibility with
the Department of Ed.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. Mr. Kantrowitz, would you like
to add to that purpose or the results of this crazy rollout
that we have had?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, the overly sunny responses by the
department were not really acknowledging the problems that they
were experiencing. They were having--it was as though this was
to spin a disaster as though it was something successful. It
was like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It was
inconceivable why they would not come out and just say the
truth that things were problematic.
Even yesterday they issued an electronic announcement where
the 20 percent of FAFSAs that need to be reprocessed because of
IRS data transfer errors, they said that they will start
reprocessing them by May 1st, so we have that they are going to
start, not when they are going to finish, and by May 1st
probably means that they are going to issue it on May 1st, or
maybe the day before.
This May 1st national candidates reply date, or decision
day it cannot possibly be on May 1st. Given that it takes
colleges at least 2 weeks to generate financial aid offers, it
probably means May 15 is out as well, so and I have been
recommending to colleges that they delay until June 1st.
I worry that will we have the FAFSA completed, updated by
the fall?
Chairman Owens. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to ask
Ms. Feldman. What kind of students have been hurt most by this
mismanagement of the Department, and who stands to lose the
most in this process?
Ms. Feldman. Yes. Clearly students who really need to know
whether they can afford school or not, so the lowest income
students are hurt the most, and those that are not accepted to
the very tiny number of elite universities that have enough
money to make offers without Federal aid. I worry most,
honestly, about a student in say rural North Carolina who has
heard all their life that college is out of their reach, they
have worked hard for 12 years, but all the voices around them
are saying they cannot afford it, and we cannot get them the
document that proves they can, and we lose out on that talent.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. Thank you so much. I would like
to now recognize Ms. Jayapal for her questioning.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Postsecondary
education helps millions of low-and middle-income students
reach economic success, and millions complete the FAFSA
annually to make it possible to pursue higher education,
whether it is a college or trade schools.
These are unacceptable issues that we have seen with the
redesign and the rollout of processing FAFSA this year, and
that has made it very difficult for students to know whether
they can afford school. Similarly, colleges have not been able
to communicate how much students award packages are, making it
harder for students to choose where to go.
These issues exacerbate a trend that I see in my home State
of Washington where too many students who may be eligible for
financial aid are not even submitting their FAFSA. My State is
ranked 47 out of 50 for FAFSA completions. Ms. Cook, the
Department of Education must continue to mitigate these FAFSA
delays as we have been talking about.
At the same time, I believe that Congress needs to examine
the barriers that prevent eligible families from receiving
student aid. 38 percent of low-income students receive the Pell
Grant, which suggests that some eligible students do not finish
their FAFSA. Clearly, this moment with FAFSA is unlike previous
years.
What issues have families raised in the past that indicate
why they skip applying altogether?
Ms. Cook. Thank you for the question.
Ms. Jayapal. If you could pull that a little closer to you
that would be great. Thank you.
Ms. Cook. Thank you for the question. What brought us here
today are many of the issues that you ask about with FAFSA. It
was a burdensome form, too complicated, asked many questions
that many families had already answered through IRS tax data,
used confusing terms that are not everyday terms, such as IRA
pension rollovers, not unfamiliar to students, and really
presented a burden and barrier to many students as you point
out.
On top of that, many students experienced a back-end audit
like process called verification that asked students to confirm
the information that they had submitted. All of those things
brought us to the simplified FAFSA, the better FAFSA, in the
hopes that things like the IRS data transfer will allow
students to cleanly move over their information that they've
already provided to the IRS and taxes for use in income, and
that that's verified data that won't be questioned again on the
back end.
I hope we are meeting a lot of those challenges that we
identified in this new format.
Ms. Jayapal. Yes. We have certainly heard that excessive
requirements block eligible students by making the process just
altogether too complex to receive aid, and failing to resolve
these issues has real consequences, as I think all of our
witnesses have laid out, including students choosing to skip
postsecondary education or those that take on more student debt
when they do not need to.
That is why I am proud of my State for taking steps to
automatically enroll students in tuition free opportunities. By
using students' eligibility for public assistance programs like
SNAP, my State will soon help students realize that they can
attend college tuition free as early as the 10th grade, it is
lifechanging.
What do programs, Ms. Cook again, what do programs like
SNAP or WIC have in common that can help eligible students--
eligible families get student aid without a complex
application?
Ms. Cook. Well, first thank you for elevating the issues of
food insecurity, which continue to challenge many of our
students in accessing college and particularly in completing
college. Washington was wise to coordinate benefit eligibility
to help students gather all of the resources they need to
support them in their higher education.
I would also point out that State aid agencies and
institutions of higher education now have the ability to reach
out to students using FAFSA data to flag potential eligibility
so they can coordinate all of those benefits.
Ms. Jayapal. The FAFSA delays continue to demonstrate the
impacts on people's lives when Federal programs are just too
complex for the average person to navigate. Washington State's
automatic eligibility is an innovative way to work around this,
and I believe the Federal Government should continue making it
easy for eligible students to receive aid.
What do you think, Ms. Cook, we should do to promote early
eligibility awareness, and minimize barriers to help students
receive the assistance that they are eligible for?
Ms. Cook. Early awareness is key to helping students
continue the aspirations that many form in elementary school,
in middle school, and continue through high school. I think
messaging eligibility, particularly around Federal student aid
is key. We are excited this year that there is a Pell lookup
table that allows us to talk to a student in those early years,
and really demonstrate what the current availability is for
aid, so that students see this as possible, and know that
funding is there to support postsecondary.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you so much. I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like to recognize my
friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much. This time of
year is typically a celebratory one for high school seniors,
and other students across the country as they gain acceptance
letters to postsecondary programs and look ahead with
excitement to their future education and pathway to careers.
Unfortunately this year, the Biden administration has
injected anxiety, frustration, and uncertainty into this
process for millions of families across this great nation.
While I remain deeply disappointed in the Department of
Education, and their consistent failure to prepare for what was
supposed to be a simplified FAFSA process, we must prevent
these issues from happening again, ensure students enrolling
for the upcoming academic year have the necessary resources.
Mr. Draeger, while we have heard about the issues with
students being able to fill out or complete FAFSA due to the
Department's failure, one thing that struck me in your
testimony, written testimony, is that we have not heard much
about the actual errors in the system it is producing leading
to things like incorrect Pell Grant awards.
As you pointed out, 20 percent of students have somehow
been able to fill out the FAFSA, have had their applications
rejected due to errors that the Department says it cannot
solve. Now, this is in addition to the 20 percent of
applications that the Department has already admitted were
processed incorrectly.
Can you share more about the root cause of these errors,
and what is causing them, and what the Department could have
done to prevent them?
Mr. Draeger. Yes. Just to be clear, these are averages, so
you will see different numbers at different schools, and some
of these numbers might be higher at individual schools. 20
percent of the errors are pulling over wrong data elements from
the IRS, so those are applications that will have to be
reprocessed, and those reprocessing will be on different
timelines.
Institutions are doing a bunch of different things here.
Some of them are getting aid offers out, only on the
applications that they know are correct. Some schools are
waiting for the reprocessing. Some schools are still deciding
what they are going to do, and so that depends on every
institution.
What it ultimately means are delays for students. On top of
that 20 percent are an additional 20 percent where the form,
the applicant data that is going to the school is not
generating enough information for them to do anything. They do
not have the numbers to calculate a financial aid offer, and
that is called a rejected ISIR, and it might be because the
student did not sign the application, or the parent did not
sign the application.
They did not sign an authorization to bring over IRS data.
It might be because they incorrectly signaled they only wanted
loans. There might be a host of reasons. In those instances,
the student or the parent needs to go in and make a correction.
The functionality to make corrections has not been brought
online. Normally that functionality exists out of the gate, but
neither a student nor an institution can go in and make a
correction as of this morning.
Those 40 percent are basically as of today at least, dead
in the water until the Department takes further action.
Mr. Thompson. Well, thank you for that. You actually
followup my followup question. You have answered that, and the
frustration that taxpayers are having with the IRS could be a
contributing factor, and the inefficiency of that agency in
order to process those tax returns.
A lot of frustrations we are hearing from taxpayers right
now as well, in addition to students and parents. As Chairman
of the House Agriculture Committee, I also have to express my
profound concern for farm families across the country having
not been able to process, to access proper aid as a result of
FAFSA's formula, and the fact that it counts their assets
against them.
These are not liquid assets. I do not know what part of a
farm they expect them to be able to sell and still be in
farming at the end of the day. Farming is an asset rich, cash
poor industry, and these families should not have their assets,
which are necessary to do their jobs and feed our Nation
counted against them when determining eligibility for a Federal
financial aid.
I think at this point my--well, I will try here. Ms.
Feldman, you and your colleagues have encountered--have you
encountered any students whose aid has been limited, or
eliminated because of this new policy?
Ms. Feldman. Thank you. Unfortunately, because of the lack
of data, or the errors in the FAFSA this year, we have not been
able to do any analysis yet to see how the formula change is
impacting our families.
Mr. Thompson. Okay. My time is about to expire, but I have
to just say thank you. I was put on my road to my master's
degree with some extra hours from the University of North
Carolina Chapel Hill. Great education, and great pig pickings
down there as well, so thank you very much. I yield.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I want now to recognize Ranking
Member Ms. Wilson.
Ms. Wilson. Thank you. Despite efforts to simplify the
FAFSA process, low-income, first generation students and
families still are facing challenges. This raises concerns
about equitable access to Federal financial aid. Ms. Cook,
based on NCAN's FAFSA tracker, what do FAFSA submission rates
look like in historically low-income communities right now?
Ms. Cook. Thank you. As I mentioned, about 30 percent fewer
FAFSAs have been submitted this year by high school seniors
compared to last year. However, those numbers are exacerbated
in low-income communities which lag 7 percentage points behind
their better resourced peers, and in schools with high minority
enrollments, which lag 6 percentage points behind, and already
behind 30 percent.
Ms. Wilson. Could you share some of the specific challenges
faced by low-income and first-generation students in completing
the form? How do these challenges affect their access to
Federal financial aid?
Ms. Cook. Sure. Many students are challenged by a lack of
knowledge about Federal student aid. The idea that the Federal
Government will provide resources such as Pell Grants and
subsidized loans. We work very hard to spread awareness about
those.
The second piece is around supports. Many under resourced
schools also do not have proper high school counselor ratios to
support students, or the ability to call on community-based
partners to do that. They are awareness and support issues for
sure, and then previously the complexity of the form and the
ability to collect all the information to complete it certainly
presented a challenge that we hope this year we will turn the
tide on.
Ms. Wilson. Okay. I am very concerned about the potential
long-term impacts of the issue on college enrollment,
particularly for low-income students and students of color. I
have heard many stories where students experiencing issues with
the form have lost confidence in the financial aid process, and
I am worried that instead of seeking help, these students will
instead opt out of college entirely.
Are you concerned about enrollment trends as a result of
the delays in FAFSA?
Ms. Cook. We absolutely share your concerns. We have heard
from many students that they have admission offers, but no aid
offers to communicate that they have an ability to afford and
pay for college.
Ms. Wilson. How can we address this psychological response
to the issue and signal to students that they belong in the
higher education system? What can we do?
Ms. Cook. Absolutely. The first thing we need to do is get
the system back on track, and get the aid offers flowing to
students, so they have the information to make the decisions,
and to communicate to students that there are ways to afford
college, including Pell Grants, and subsidized loans, and then
State and institutional aid.
The second is all of the people, the village of people, the
school counselors, the access advisors, financial aid
personnel, admission personnel, who continue to message to
students that they belong, and that we can help them make this
happen.
Ms. Wilson. I am extremely concerned, but I do have
confidence that things will get better next year. Anytime
something is new, anytime you rollout something, so with the
Department of Education I am sure that they are working on
these quirks and next year it will be different, but I am
extremely concerned about the class of 2024. Thank you, and I
yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would now like to recognize
Mr. Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you. My first answer--first question
for Mr. Draeger. We obviously are dealing with a mess here
today, thanks for coming over here. Do you feel like the
Department has owned its mistakes, or taken responsibility? Do
you believe any employees at the Department of Education,
political or otherwise, should lose their job because of the
botched rollout?
Mr. Draeger. The Department has certainly acknowledged that
these have been difficult and challenging times. I have yet to
hear any sort of apologies from the Department of Education,
and not even to schools, but to students and families. Maybe I
admit that maybe I have missed them, but we are months--six
months delayed from where the FAFSA should have been released
to students and families.
There are a lot of glitches and challenges, and there have
been entire swaths of students who have not been able to
complete it, so we have not seen that. I think this Committee,
bipartisanly has the responsibility to explore whether there
should be ramifications felt as it relates to those sorts of
questions, Mr. Grothman.
I would add two points to this. One is if there was a
financial aid director, or even a college president that
delayed financial aid on their campus for up to 6 months, the
professional price that would be paid for that would be pretty
steep.
The second point that I would raise is that the Federal
student aid is one of only three performance-based
organizations within the Federal Government. It operates very
uniquely in the Federal Government. That means it has given
certain flexibilities that do not exist elsewhere within
Federal agencies in terms of hiring, H.R. practices, and
contracting.
With those flexibilities should come additional
accountability that Congress should hold them to account for.
If it is okay with the Committee, we could certainly submit
some of NASFA's recommendations on PBO accountability and
reform.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. We will switch to Ms. Feldman. When
would your university normally send out aid officers, and
because of the delays, when will the offers be sent out this
year?
Ms. Feldman. Yes. Normally we attempt to send out aid
offers with our offers of admission, so that would have been
toward the end of January for our early admission applicants,
and toward the end of March for our regular. We have yet to be
able to send out a single aid offer because of the poor quality
of the data, and the late receipt of the ISIRs.
We are hopeful that we have found some workarounds because
we are one of those schools that also collect the CSS profile
form, that will allow us to produce aid offers in a couple of
weeks. However, without that I am not sure I would have an
answer for you today.
Mr. Grothman. You have no idea when you guess they will be
coming out this year?
Ms. Feldman. I am hoping in by the first week of May we
will have something out there. I am hoping.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. I have been contacted by some
professionals in Wisconsin, obviously they have a lot of
colleges, they are like everybody else. They are losing faith
in the Department. What do you think the Department of
Education has to do to restore trust with the colleges and
financial aid officers?
Ms. Feldman. Yes. I understand that lack of faith when the
information and guidance keeps changing, when just when we
think we are going to get information there is another delay. I
think what we really need from the Department is for them to
own the problems that they have, which they have started doing,
and just tell us straight what is going to work, what is not
going to work, anything about next year that we should know
now.
It is sort of hard to believe we are going to all be solved
and in time for next year. Let us start planning for that right
now, and let us be good partners and try to help each other
solve all the problems.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Let me give you guys one more question,
which is a little bit off point. Maybe you can answer it for
me. I visited one of my financial aid offices, and to my
surprise they viewed loans as a carrot to get more people into
school. In other words, it is clear they felt you could take
out a loan of this size, think how much fun you would have.
Do you find any of this attitude anywhere when you get
around and are you doing what you can to make sure that
attitude does not, you know, get out among your universities?
Mr. Draeger. Well, speaking on the financial aid offices we
represent, to the contrary what we hear from aid directors is
they would like the authority to actually limit lending in
certain circumstances for swaths of student, something we would
love to work with you on, Mr. Grothman.
Mr. Grothman. Okay. Thank you very much.
Mr. Smucker [presiding]. I would now like to recognize Ms.
Bonamici for 5 minutes of questioning.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you to the Chair and Ranking Member,
thank you to all the witnesses. I have been on this Committee
more than a dozen years, and I recall over the years all the
conversations we had about FAFSA simplification. I do not
recall at the time having conversations about the technology
part of it, and what a massive change.
I think it was you, Mr. Kantrowitz, that mentioned Cobal. I
do not recall conversations about what that would look like to
completely redo that system technologically, and I have spent a
long time working on having the Department of Education work
with Treasury to automatically update income payments for
income driven repayment plans.
I keep thinking why is this taking so long? Why is it so
complicated? It is something that should be easier than it
looks I think at first glance. The bipartisan FAFSA
Simplification Act, it was necessary. It was overdue and I
think there is agreement on that point to help students and
their families better access financial aid and affordable
higher education.
As someone who put myself through community college,
college, law school, it is been a long time since I filled out
a FAFSA form, but I know it needed to be updated. We sit here
today with I think no question that mistakes were made, and
that the communication has lagged. There is no question about
that.
I am especially concerned about the underserved
communities, such as students from mixed status families,
students who may be eligible for TRIO or GEAR-UP programs. They
have faced additional burdens in completing and submitting
their applications, and I know somebody brought up the lack of
assistance from high school counselors who are already
overburdened with all the other issues that they are dealing
with, and then what happens when school is over, and students
do not have access to those counselors anymore?
I still have some hope that this application cycle of
course, we are going through these challenges now. It is
difficult. I hope we can get them solved, and thank you for all
the solutions you put out there today, and I hope we can move
to really a better future for students who are seeking Federal
aid for postsecondary education with the understanding that the
intent of the simplification bill was just that, to simplify,
not make more complicated FAFSA.
Ms. Cook, in February the Department of Education announced
their FAFSA college support strategy, designed to provide
additional resources to colleges as they go through this
process. How is that college support strategy working? Is it
supporting colleges and universities through the process, and
how can the Department continue to build on these efforts in
the coming months, not just to support colleges and
universities, but also students and families?
Ms. Cook. Yes, thank you for the question. We were excited
to hear about the college support strategy and that it would
help support the institutions, many which are under resourced,
and many of which enroll our students. Our hope was that those
supports would help the schools process ISIRs so that our
students could receive that all important aid offer, that
message that they could attend college this year.
Many reporters have asked me well, how will students choose
between colleges? I said the real question for many of our
students, particularly from low-income backgrounds, is if they
can afford college, not where. We hoped that those funds are
able to support schools that ultimate support our students.
To your question about how we built on that, I think it is
increasingly clear that we will need extended time with these
students, particularly high school seniors in the Class of
2024, and we will need to continue the supports through the
summer.
In my testimony I advocated for expanding the strategy to
also be able to support community based organizations, State
aid agencies and school district who will no doubt be called
upon to continue to support students past high school
graduation dates.
Ms. Bonamici. You mentioned in your testimony the NCAN
FAFSA tracker?
Ms. Cook. Yes.
Ms. Bonamici. I mean this is showing submission rates for
current high school seniors and comparing them to historical
trends, and as of the end of March 35 percent of high school
students have submitted a FAFSA form, which is more than 27
percent decrease.
How does the FAFSA tracker help states and schools and
other stakeholders support completion, and what can we glean
from the current completion levels? I know the current data
concerns you, as you mentioned, and others here at the dais.
Ms. Cook. Yes. The tracker we hope we often say in the
office that data is a flashlight. We hope that that FAFSA
tracker will help District leaders, superintendents, and high
school principals and school counselors, and access advisors to
understand where the outreach is needed the most, and how we
target that to students to encourage FAFSA completion.
Ms. Bonamici. Well, I hope everyone here today, and
everyone listening understands that we should be working
together. This is about the students, and getting them the
answers that they need, and that is what our focus should be,
and I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like to recognize now
Mr. Banks from Indiana.
Mr. Banks. Mr. Draeger and Ms. Feldman, either one of you.
AXIOS in Indianapolis reported today that Indiana has seen a 20
percent drop in FAFSA submissions. That could mean 20 percent
fewer Hoosiers getting financial aid. What is the best way for
Congress to hold the Biden administration accountable for
putting people in my State in a situation like that? I mean it
really seems egregious.
Mr. Draeger. I think the responsibility, as you have
pointed out, does rest with Congress. As I pointed out earlier,
FSA is one of three performance-based organizations, and so it
does have some additional flexibilities that I think this body
bipartisanly should be looking at, including H.R. hiring
practices and contracting.
You are off to a good start. You have asked the Government
Accountability Office to begin a full investigation of what has
gone on with FAFSA, and I think once that report comes in it
would be good if several of the questions we have already
started here were asked directly of the Department of
Education.
Ms. Feldman. I would agree with my colleague. I think again
I just want to reiterate we know there are not career staff at
the Department of Ed for the fame and glory, so there are
people there working hard every single day. When something goes
wrong it is the leadership that you look to for accountability,
and you can do that through these hearing processes.
Mr. Banks. There does not ever seem to be accountability
though, and I mean I wonder you know does it appear, either one
of you, that the administration is embarrassed by this? I mean
it affects so many people.
Mr. Draeger. I think we have definitely seen an uptick from
the administration in putting more resources to this in the
last several months, even in the last 24 hours since this
hearing was announced. Many of the things that I put in my
written testimony about the issues that have plagued the FAFSA
rollout from the financial aid office perspective, we have seen
some changes in in the last couple months, and even in the last
24 hours.
They have thrown more resources at in in terms of showing
up at conferences, having more webinars, communicating more
frequently, and thankfully at least, and we will see if this
sticks. In the last 24 hours they have been more direct in
their operational guidance, instead of pumping it up with fluff
and sort of PR.
I guess what I would say though that a lot of that feels
like trying to close the barn doors after the horses have left
the stable, and so I think it is going to take additional
oversight from bipartisanly from this Committee, to make sure
we have the stick-to-itiveness to make sure that we see it
through it if we are going to salvage this year.
Mr. Banks. Mr. Kantrowitz, a new story out this week by the
Biden administration may try to make another end run around the
Supreme Court to erase student loan debt. Is there a connection
here? I mean? Is there a connection between the botched rollout
and erasing student loan debt?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, I think it has been perhaps a
distraction whereas in the primary purpose of Federal student
aid is the student financial aid and the FAFSA. Those are the
bread and butter issues, and where they have been focusing on
trying to bypass the Supreme Court ruling through the
regulatory process, and I do not know how many of the staff
overlap, but it certainly means that they cannot have all hands
on deck focusing on the FAFSA when some of them are focused on
other aspects of the Federal student aid's responsibility.
Mr. Banks. Do you think it is more of a--the distraction
means botching an important rollout of FAFSA forms when they
should have been focused on the FAFSA forms to begin with? I
mean it is an interesting point.
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, for example Congress offered to
increase their funding if they did not pursue student loan
forgiveness, and they turned that down. At least in that regard
they did not get the funding they needed because they were
focused on the student loan forgiveness piece.
Mr. Banks. Yes, I mean obviously erasing student loan debt
is a political move, a cost share leading into an election, and
you are suggesting that the focus paid there might have very
much--that that focus and those resources should have been
focused on doing their job to begin with, which is rolling out
these FAFSA forms, and helping people like me, that relied on
student aid to actually be the first in my family to go to
college, so shame on them for that lack of focus, and the
mistakes that they've made. I yield back.
Chairman Owens. I would like to now recognize Mrs. McBath
from Georgia.
Mrs. McBath. Thank you so much, Chairman Owens and Ranking
Member DeSaulnier. Thank you to our witnesses for being here
with us today. I have read your testimoneys. It is obvious that
the launch of this year's FAFSA has not gone as we intended,
and now it is vital that we do everything in our power to
support and provide the flexibility that is so vitally
necessary for our institutions and also students to be shielded
from any negative impact that this may have had on their daily
lives, and also operations.
The stakes could not be higher for many of our college aged
young people across this country. I just spent some time with
some early on this morning, college students, one of the
sorority groups I was with. As May quickly approaches, so does
college decision day.
Federal financial aid is a viral part, it is a very not
well viral, but also vital part of college affordability for
many families. It is heartbreaking reality that some of our
students may forego college this year due to the lack of
information about financial resources from the delay in the new
FAFSA program.
Since the launch of this year's delayed FAFSA form,
institutions have expressed concerns with their ability to
comply with several Title 4 reporting requirements, while
simultaneously supporting student enrollment and processing
financial aid in a timely manner.
In response to these concerns, the Department of Education
has taken several steps to reduce the burden on financial aid
offices and institutions in general. For example, instead of
having to provide all required reporting by July 31st of this
year, institutions will be able to start reporting financial
value transparency and gainful employment data through a new
Department system starting in July, but will now have until
October 1 to submit, giving them an additional 2 months.
I appreciate the steps that have been taken by the
Department to provide relief to the financial aid teams that
are tasked with providing this information as well as
processing financial aid. However, one of the many things that
has been unfortunately damaged by this implementation has been
the level of trust that exists between institutions and the
Department.
I know that we can and must make a concerted effort to
rebuild that trust and to ensure that every student receives
their financial aid as quickly as they possibly can, and I know
that we are working to make sure that nothing like this ever
happens again. The plan to collect financial value transparency
and gainful employment data through a new system sounds similar
to what institutions were being told in regard to this year's
FAFSA.
I know that they are truly concerned about the Department's
ability to receive that data, as well as when the time comes.
Again, I do emphasize how important it is that we fix these
issues as quickly as we possibly can and return to the strong
level of trust that this Department has really, really been
known for.
My question is, Mr. Draeger, can you please provide context
for why these reporting requirements pose unique capacity
challenges for institutions to share, and how flexibility will
help institutions focus on their enrollment and the financial
aid process?
Mr. Draeger. Yes, thanks very much. I just want to thank
you for raising this issue. These reporting requirements will
shed a light on outcomes data at institutions in an entirely
new way. It also requires an enormous lift at every institution
and coming up with all of the data requirements that will be
required to shed light on all of these program-by-program level
outcomes for students.
For the schools, primarily through their financial aid
offices, right now they are 6 months behind, and are being
asked to do 6 months of work in 6 weeks. While we appreciate
the delay from the Department, they only offered a 2-month
delay. What we are really seeking from the Department is
something that is a little more commensurate with the delay in
the FAFSA.
If you talk to any institution in your district, or any
district, we are asking for a little bit more of delay that is
commensurate with the delay in the FAFSA processing. At the end
of this, I think we will have something that is valuable for
students, but we need just a little bit more time, and it will
hit hardest the under resources schools that are serving the
largest numbers of under resourced students. The students who
are most dependent on Federal student aid.
Mrs. McBath. Thank you so much and I'm out of time. I
appreciate it.
Chairman Owens. I would like to now recognize Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know we sat here
many months ago with representatives of the Department of
Education, asking them specifically about the FAFSA rollout,
about the delays, and about their confidence that they would
meet all of the deadlines that clearly none of them met.
Even the oversight of Congress seems to have no effect on
the actual performance of the Department of Education. I find
that pretty shocking. Listening to your testimony there is so
many different areas where this seems to have failed,
functionality, the timing, transparency with the Department of
Education and their communication.
The accuracy of the back-end processing of the actual
results. I would like to ask each one of you what grade would
you give the Department of Education in their rollout of
simplified FAFSA?
Mr. Kantrowitz. I would give them an F.
Mr. Williams. F? Please, Mr. Draeger.
Mr. Draeger. F.
Mr. Williams. Yes.
Ms. Cook.
Ms. Cook. C.
Mr. Williams. They did not turn in their homework, and you
still give them a C, really?
Ms. Cook. I believe they have turned in their homework on
some cases. I am deeply disappointed by the process, do not get
me wrong.
Mr. Williams. Well, 40 percent, there is an enormous number
of disadvantaged families that would disagree with you today,
tonight, as they worry about their child's education future.
Ms. Feldman, do you mind?
Ms. Feldman. I guess I will give them a D for
disappointing.
Mr. Williams. That is cutting a very fine line there. It is
clear that we have identified who has been harmed, but I think
all of you have very correctly identified that it is really the
lowest income who is the most vulnerable in our society, the
most that need and rely on the promise of education to be able
to move forward in their lives.
They are the ones that are in the dark literally tonight,
with the decisions about their future. I would like to skip
ahead to what is the consequence and the remedy. I would ask
another little question here. Could each one of you tell me if
you believe that the system will work flawlessly? The
simplified FAFSA system will work flawlessly in October of this
year, later this year? What's your confidence, high, medium,
low?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Medium. We have less than 6 months before
October 1st start date. I am not certain that they might have
to delay that start date.
Mr. Williams. Well, Mr. Draeger?
Mr. Draeger. If you are asking me whether the FAFSA will be
live and working in October, and schools will get that
information in October?
Mr. Williams. Yes. The system would work as designed.
Mr. Draeger. Low.
Mr. Williams. Low. It is still low. Prediction?
Ms. Cook. Medium.
Mr. Williams. Okay.
Ms. Feldman.
Ms. Feldman. Yes. I would also say low. I think right now I
have no confidence that we will have any records at the
beginning of October.
Mr. Williams. I come out of the tech industry. You know,
rolling out a business process automation, or you know,
enterprise scale or web scale type application, hosted
application, which is what this is. A lot of back-end
coordination with IRS or other departments, whatever those APIs
are that you are making calls from.
It is not a trivial task to roll this out, but this rollout
has been disastrous, and you know, frankly inexcusable. I have
heard some of my colleagues today say we are going to make sure
nothing like this happens again, and I just laugh out loud
because our government makes these kinds of promises to deliver
these kinds of solutions.
We give them billions of dollars to do this, and they fail
again and again, and there is no accountability. They ignore
Congress. They ignore the will of the people. I think 10.8
million families need to shout out their grievance against the
Department of Education and their failure to deliver on the
promise of the financial aid.
As my colleagues have pointed out, kids spent 12 years,
parents spend years planning and dreaming and preparing for the
opportunities, part of which is particularly with the
incredibly high cost of higher education, is predicated on
exactly these kinds of programs.
Our government fails to deliver over and over and over
again, and there most certainly will be accountability. For the
last few seconds, any suggestions on who we need to have in
front of this Committee, and the questions we need to ask?
Mr. Kantrowitz. I think you need to have the operational
staff, senior operations, the chief operating officer before
this Committee to answer questions about the Federal student
aid's handling of the FAFSA.
Mr. Williams. Okay. Any last comments? I am over time. All
right. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Okay. All right. I would like now recognize
Ms. Leger Fernandez from New Mexico.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
joining us today. I cannot tell you how many texts I have
received, of which I know everybody on this panel has from
friends, from constituents, just screaming how difficult it is
for them to make a decision.
As I plan to go to graduations now in May, give
commencement addresses at graduations, go celebrate, people
don't know what they are doing, right? They cannot make those
decisions. What is really sad is that this is impacting those
who most need it because FAFSA is for those who need that
financial aid. They need to know whether they are going to get
their Pell Grant.
They need to get that financial assistance, and so exactly
what college is supposed to be about, which is about upward
mobility, about closing the racial gaps. This disaster of what
happened with FAFSA is hurting the communities that I care
deeply about.
We know that the delays are causing a drop in enrollment in
New Mexico where applications from high school seniors are down
28 percent compared to last year. In New Mexico, we rolled out
an opportunity scholarship, so you are going to have the
tuition paid.
The Pell Grants and the other scholarships and things that
come are important because college is not just about tuition,
right? My rural districts, 40 percent--40 percent decrease.
Right now, we need to be in the solution game. You acknowledge
it is a mess, right? We know it is a problem. I do not want to
just be in the blame game, I want to be in the solution game.
We need to get those applications back up. Ms. Cook, what
are your recommendations for how we can best support students
and their families at this time to help them successfully
navigate the FAFSA delays, and are there effective community
outreach resources we can share with our constituents?
Ms. Cook. Absolutely. Thank you for sounding the alarm on
the urgency of the situation. It is quite urgent. We have
limited precious weeks left. I appreciate your solution to
orientation, and I am happy to share some of those.
This is a very one on one experience to complete a FAFSA in
many cases, so the first recommendation and solution is to
support school districts and community-based organizations in
getting as much time as they can with students as soon as
possible to help them complete their FAFSAs while we still have
access to them during the high school year.
The second is that many states, including New Mexico, which
I appreciate, have statewide paths to completion campaigns. We
need to increase and extend those beyond the typical time of
March, beyond the typical time of high school graduation. I
mentioned earlier that summer supports will be necessary given
the delays.
We have a delayed opening, but we have, you know, a finish
line that remains fixed, that the semester begins in August and
September for most students. We are going to need to use all of
the time we have available, and make new time that we have not
traditionally made to support students with completion events,
and individual completion support.
Again, this idea of using the college strategy funds to
support districts, to support funding for summer is important,
and encouraging those institutions in your districts to have
flexibility on their deadlines for students who are still
awaiting aid offers and deciding that they can attend.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Another issue that I am concerned
about, and I wrote a letter to the Secretary, I signed a letter
to the Secretary of Education in February, about the problem
that FAFSA was having with parents who have mixed immigration
status, right.
We wanted to see that fixed. The Department of Education
responded that they fixed this submission error last month, but
we know challenges still persist for mixed status families.
Could you please share, Ms. Cook, experience you have heard
from mixed immigration status families about their ongoing
challenges in completing FAFSA, and how are you addressing
these concerns?
I need to remind everybody that immigrants contributed so
much economic vitality to the United States economy, and we
need to make sure that we are able to honor those contributions
by ensuring that children who are eligible, make sure that they
are able to access the education resources that they deserve.
Ms. Cook. Thank you for that. The ability of eligible
dependent students who have parents without social security
numbers to use the FAFSA form was one of the top promising new
pieces coming with the FAFSA this year.
It also has been the top frustration communicated by our
members who serve students, many of whom are eligible dependent
students, having parents without a social security number.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. Oh, I see that my time has expired,
and----
Ms. Cook. To be continued in writing.
Ms. Leger Fernandez. We would love to have your submissions
in writing because these are things that people care about in
my district and across the country. Thank you very much, and
with that I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you so much. I would like to now
recognize Mr. Good.
Mr. Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses. Mr. Draeger, is there any evidence that FAFSA
implementation, or successful implementation has been a
priority for the Biden administration?
Mr. Draeger. When the Biden administration came in, they
asked and met with us about our priorities, and we flagged
FAFSA implementation as one of them. They were receptive to
that. If they took it seriously, I think the evidence speaks
for itself in that they did not take it seriously enough.
Over that same period of time as been pointed out, they
have tried to tackle a lot of things. Four negotiated
rulemakings, debt forgiveness, next generation loans servicing,
return to repayment. Operation Fresh Start for defaulted
borrowers, and I am not casting aspersions on what
administrations come in and feel they have mandates from the
electorate.
In fact, NASFA has supported several of their initiatives.
What I would point out is this was the bipartisan mandate from
Congress. The facts speak for themselves of where we are today.
If everything is a priority, any CEO will tell you, you do not
have a strategic roadmap then. You do not have a strategic
priority.
Unfortunately we are where we are today because this did
not rise to the top.
Mr. Good. Yes. You gave these suggestions to them 3 years
ago in January 21, which is when the Biden
administration started, so they have had the benefit of this
for all 3 years they have been there. Your point, if everything
is a priority nothing is a priority. Well, they have not made
everything a priority.
What they have been obsessed with, or what they have been
focused on as we know is the student loan transfer scheme. This
administration has relentlessly focused on what they call
student loan forgiveness, and you do wonder, are they just
dishonest, or are they incompetent?
Do they really think it is magic money that just disappears
when you forgive it, it just goes away? You wonder why they
would not do the same with mortgage loans, or auto loans, or
credit cards, or what have you because people do not really
like to have to make those payments, and it is not really fair
that some people have mortgage loans because they bought homes,
and some people do not have mortgage loans, or maybe they paid
off their homes.
In this case it delegitimized student loan investment. We
have delegitimized the whole process, but just in the last 6
months since October, when FAFSA was supposed to have been
done, here is what the administration has prioritized. On
October 4, the Biden administration announces a transfer of 9
billion dollars in student loan to the taxpayer.
November 8, the Biden administration announces nearly 5 and
a half million borrowers are enrolled in the Save Plan, which
allows millions to have a zero monthly payment. December 6th,
the Biden administration transfers nearly 5 billion dollars of
student debt to the taxpayer. January 19, the Biden
administration transfers 4.9 billion of student debt to the
taxpayers.
February 21, the Biden administration transfers 1.2 billion
in student loan debt to the taxpayers. March 21, the Biden
administration transfers 5.8 billion in student loan debt to
the taxpayers, not to be outdone, or not to stop pursuing this,
just this week on April 8th, the Biden administration announces
new plans to transfer student debt--more student loan debt to
the American taxpayer.
I suppose that is coincidental to the election that's
forthcoming. I am sure it is not a vote buying scheme. Ms.
Feldman, what student population is most negatively impacted?
What student population most negatively impacted by FAFSA
delays?
When that is not working the way that it should, and there
are delays for parents and students, who does that impact the
most negatively?
Ms. Feldman. Thank you. That of course impacts the most--
the students who need the money to go to college. It also
impacts the most of students with the least experience with
college going, so first generation students, children of
immigrants. Populations that may have been told all their life
that college was not for them.
They have worked very hard, and now they honestly do not
know whether they can afford it.
Mr. Good. It would not impact as much those families who
maybe had several kids go through college, and they have done
FAFSA before, and they know the process, but those first-time
ones in addition to the lower income folks, and does a delayed
poorly executed FAFSA rollout, does that help lower college
costs for families? Does that do anything to help lower costs?
Ms. Feldman. Unfortunately, I do not think that helps lower
costs, it just makes the costs less clear, which is the worst
case, right that there is no information to make a decision
with.
Mr. Good. The bigger, longer-term view of this, does a
student loan transfer scheme actually reduce college costs, do
you believe?
Ms. Feldman. Are you asking me if forgiving people's loans
are being----
Mr. Good. Yes. What does that do overall to college costs
more broadly, more generally if that happens. If we just say
oh, you do not have to pay student loans, then what happens to
college costs overall?
Ms. Feldman. Well, I guess for people that do not have to
pay their loans it just got cheaper.
Mr. Good. Well, it did in the immediacy, but a study from
the New York Federal Reserve found that for every one dollar
increase in loan subsidies, institutions of higher education
actually capture 60 cents on the dollar through increased
tuition.
If you delegitimize student loans themselves in the payment
process, then more loans are going to be made or taken out
obviously if you do not have to pay for those, which will
ultimately result in more higher costs being raised.
Mr. Chairman, I see I have expired my time, and I yield
back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like to recognize Dr.
Adams.
Ms. Adams. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the
Ranking Member, and thank you all for being here and certainly
we want to welcome North Carolina in the house as well. Let me
just say that I agree with my colleagues that we have got a
situation here that right now we need to try to fix it.
I have had 40 years on the college campus as a professor
and an administrator, and I do understand what students need,
particularly as it relates to financial aid as I worked with
many students who really were first generation. Of course, they
needed that support, and they still do.
I have a question, first of all about the designated
entities for Ms. Cook. We have heard more concerns about the
stakeholders and their inability to access student Federal tax
information to support the enrollment, and the completion. We
are looking at interpretation of both the FAFSA Simplification
Act, and the Future Act, which was a bill that I sponsored.
Programs or entities like TRIO and GEAR-UP and State
agencies are unable to access this data. Let me just ask you
can you share more information about this designated entities
issue, and how it impacts the support various educational
stakeholders can provide to students?
Ms. Cook. I would be happy to. As you point out, these
designated entities give groups like TRIO, GEAR-UP and non-
profits with established relationships with students the
ability to know the FAFSA completion status on a student level,
so that helps me know that Kim has not completed her FAFSA, and
I should go target her, reach out to her rather than needing to
reach out broadly.
It allows targeted outreach to support students through to
FAFSA completion.
Ms. Adams. Okay.
Ms. Cook. We had struggled with this for quite some time,
the new definitions of Federal tax information put into
question some ability to share that information. We learned on
Friday that designated entities, TRIO, GEAR-UP and nonprofits
with established relationships with students will be able to
have access to that data after each State agency updates their
SAIG agreement with the Department.
Ms. Adams. Okay. Are there additional components of this
issue that Congress or the Department of Ed need to consider
for either this year's FAFSA process, or for 2025-26?
Ms. Cook. Yes. Clearly the ability to share this data,
which we hope will come in time for this cycle, but may come
more over the summer, or for the coming cycle, will be critical
to targeted outreach. We hear there are still some open
questions about the ability to share non FTI, non-Federal tax
information across campus, perhaps with other campus supports,
and to coordinate means tested benefits eligibility, so we look
forward to more on that.
Ms. Adams. Thank you very much. Let me ask Mr. Draeger, can
you share some of the ongoing challenges faced by under-
resourced institutions, particularly in terms of their ability
to support students in navigating the financial aid process?
Mr. Draeger. One of the strengths of the U.S. Higher
Education System is we have so many different types of schools
that are serving so many different types of students. Under-
resourced institutions serve a disproportionate number of Pell
eligible students. Working against under-sourced institutions
is the fact that they generally have fewer staff.
They have fewer resources they are working with; they have
fewer systems expertise. Right now, in the FAFSA rollout, the
Department of Education is asking these schools to do a lot of
manual work. They are having to sort through a lot of files
manually to determine which files and records are accurate, and
which ones are not accurate.
That leaves under-resourced institutions at a disadvantage
relative to their peers.
Ms. Adams. Okay.
Mr. Draeger. Those schools cannot get out aid offers as
quickly.
Ms. Adams. All right. Let me quickly ask Ms. Feldman. If
these FAFSA challenges continue, what are some of the long-term
impacts on student enrollment, financial aid packaging, and
general institutional stability?
Ms. Feldman. Yes. I really worry that we will lose the
lowest income, high talent students, that they will choose not
to enroll in college, and that will be bad for the entire
economic and social mobility of our State. I worry that we will
not be able to well predict our class, and provide the right
services to the students who do show up, and the longer we
delay, we also delay our connecting of students to campus
services, like orientation, finding an advisor, Summer Bridge,
and similar programs.
We are not setting those students who do come up for
success.
Ms. Adams. Right. Thank you very much all of you for your
responses. I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like now to recognize
Mr. Moran.
Mr. Moran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I could actually be a
witness today. I think at one of these hearing because I have
two children that are graduating seniors in high school. I am
actually going through this FAFSA process like many, many other
parents across this Nation.
Many of us recognize that our students cannot move through
that financial aid process until the FAFSA process actually is
completed, and in fact, many colleges will not let you move
through the in-college scholarship process until the FAFSA
process has been completed.
I am going to just tell you a little bit about my
experience because I am looking at my emails right now, and I'm
going to laugh about some of these emails here in a second
because the first email I got was from January the 7th, and it
says, has my daughter's name. ``Can't be eligible for Federal
student aid without your input. Help them complete the FAFSA
form online.''
For the next month after that I can tell you I got online
and tried to fill out my portion, which is just to verify my
income, over and over and over again, several times per week
for a month's period of time, and then I finally gave up.
February the 4th I submitted an inquiry, a case. I got a
case number back that day and said, ``Hey, I can't get through
because you keep giving me an error message that says it's your
fault on your end effectively, and my daughter needs me to
process this, so that she can actually apply for Federal
student aid when she goes to college.''
Got no response. Funny enough though, except to say thank
you for your inquiry here is your case number. Two months
later, ironically last week, I get an email that says, ``We've
closed your case.'' Now, in the interim it finally worked.
After many, many several weeks of attempts, it finally worked,
but then I get an email 2 months later that says we have closed
your case, and also, even more ironically, I have an email from
last Thursday that says, ``Dear Nathaniel, thank you for
contacting Federal Student Aid. We would love to hear your
thoughts about your experience.''
I am pretty sure that they are going to get the thoughts on
my experience today and through you guys, because my experience
was not good. It is not just me, but I know it is millions, or
hundreds of thousands of other individuals in this country
trying to go through the same process and having the same
frustrations.
Their kids are just looking for an opportunity to get
higher education. That is all they want. I am also hearing from
my institutions of higher learning back in East Texas, and here
is what one of them told me, is that one-third of the customary
FAFSA applications are coming in this year compared to years
past at the same point in time.
Which means less students are actually moving through the
process, which means next year we are going to have less
students actually enrolled in institutions of higher education.
The same institution reported that the Department of Education
has effectively stopped sending them any FAFSA updates as of
March 22, 2024.
They say they have no visibility on their returning
students, or their new students on how has or who has not
effectively done that, so they can reach out and contact those
students that have applied, or that are returning to say hey,
what can we do to help you, to try to get them through that
process as well.
Here was a quote I found really interesting from one of the
institutions of higher learning in my district. They said this,
``The 2024-2025 FAFSA rollout has presented a greater threat to
higher education than COVID 4 years ago.'' That is their
opinion to me because of the challenges that their students are
facing, they need this financial aid to be able to get out of
where they are at in their station in life, and pursue their
calling in this life, and they cannot do it because our
government has failed them.
I know all of you guys agree with that, and I appreciate
your testimony today, but frankly I wanted to give you my two
cents. As a parent that is going through that same process with
the same frustrations.
Mr. Kantrowitz, I want to ask you this. Based on where
things currently stand, how behind is the development cycle for
the 2025-2026 FAFSA when compared to a typical year? Do you
believe there will be additional delays for 2025?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, in a normal year, typically in
February, the Department of Education publishes the draft
FAFSA, the paper PDF version for the upcoming October 1st year.
Last year for the 24-25 FAFSA, it was a month late. It was
March 23d instead of February 24 the year before.
Well, we are passed March, and we still do not have a draft
of the new FAFSA. We have got 6 months, and another concern is
that the financial aid formula has annual inflationary
adjustments, and through the process of they have not done the
adjustments I offered to provide them with the tables and
documentation to show how I calculated them.
I was told that it was not as simple as swapping out the
numbers. Well, that suggests to me that it was not implemented
in a modular fashion, so doing that annual update is probably
going to be as difficult as it was in previous years. Instead
of taking this infrastructure redesign as an opportunity to
improve the process.
They could still get it done by October 1st, but I have
seen no signs that they are working on it, probably because
they are still working on getting this year's FAFSA, 24-25
done. I lack confidence that they're not going to have to delay
the October 21st date for the 25-26 FAFSA.
Mr. Moran. I too lack confidence. I know I am out of time,
but because of these delays and uncertainty, many students who
need this financial aid the most are opting not to attend
college next year because of the uncertainty of it all, and
that is a pure shame. With that I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would now like to recognize
Mr. Courtney.
Mr. Courtney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the
witnesses for being here today. Again, your experience on the
ground I think is just really incredibly important right now,
and I come from a State which looking at the completed FAFSA,
we are No. 1 in terms of, you know, but it obviously is still
an incredible source of frustration in my district.
Mr. Chairman, I have a letter from Mitchell College, which
is a small higher education institution in New London,
Connecticut. It has about 500 students, it is a nonprofit
college that serves a really, you know, important population.
They have a significant number of students with disabilities
that are admitted.
The percentage of Pell students is 61 percent, and 95
percent use student aid, and you know, they are doing such
great work. The number of applications coming in this year
actually went up 40 percent. The number of deposits at this
point is down 67 percent, and they really do not have the
financial strength to absorb that.
President Tracy Espy obviously supports the intent of this
FAFSA reform, but obviously it is really a crisis almost for
that institution. I ask that that be admitted to the record.
Chairman Owens. No objection.
[The information of Mr. Courtney follows:]
GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT
Mr. Courtney. I was around back in 2010 when we passed the
post-911 GI Bill, which again was probably one of the most
popular important things that we did in terms of particularly
at a time when we had so many people serving overseas.
The rollout, as I think some of you may recall, was a
complete fiasco. The VA opened up the portal, the system
completely crashed, you know, returning veterans who were about
to, you know, matriculate, still hadn't received their subsidy
from the VA. I remember the Secretary at the time, Eric
Shinseki actually basically had all hands on deck in terms of
manually writing checks so that veterans could, you know, make
their payment to begin classes.
It did not do the trick by itself. It still took really a
number of years before that program actually sort of was able
to finally live up to the mission of serving people who I think
every American supported in terms of giving them a much
stronger benefit under the GI Bill.
Ms. Cook, you talked about the fact that we have got a week
of action coming up, which is again that one on one sort of
effort, and in fact Mr. Draeger, in your testimony you
described your own personal experience about personally helping
students complete the FAFSA as often as I can, it is easier to
complete, especially for the most vulnerable student
populations.
I mean ideally if we had bodies, the boots on the ground to
get out there and talk. I mean, you know, can we make a dent in
terms of that approach? I will let Ms. Cook go first, and let
Mr. Draeger respond.
Ms. Cook. Yes. Thank you for the question and the urgency
that informs that question. You pointed out that we have a week
of action. We need weeks of action. We need days of action. We
have a very limited timeframe left, particularly with our high
school seniors. We are not sure yet how renewal rates are going
for current college students, so I will put a pin in potential
concern for renewal rates as well.
This time really has to be well spent with the students
that we still have access to. Some of the northeast schools,
you know, go later into the year, maybe through June, where
others are ending in May, so urgency to spend time with the
students while we have them in school, and again, ringing the
bell on the fact that this cycle will be extended, and we will
have to look for ways to continue to support and access
students through the summer.
Mr. Courtney. Mr. Draeger.
Mr. Draeger. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Courtney, and thank you
for raising the institutional voices in your District. You have
been a long champion of this work. I started in 2010. I
remember that rollout, and it is going to take all of us
rolling up our sleeves and getting this work done for a
sustained period of time.
Financial aid offices are short staffed and have been since
COVID, but I am happy to report that they will put in the time.
They will help students complete the FAFSA. I think this year
is salvageable. It will be painful, but we can get through it
together.
Mr. Courtney. Again, I know I have dealt with your
membership in Connecticut, and it is just, you know these are
great people who really are committed to helping students, and
hopefully that will happen.
I just want to use my remaining seconds just you know, the
Department, particularly in terms of the public service loan
forgiveness, they were under court order to fix that program,
which had been completed butchered in the prior administration.
I mean to some degree the prioritization is sometimes
driven by external forces, which the Department really doesn't
have under its own control, and with that I yield back.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like now to recognize
Mr. Smucker.
Mr. Smucker. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you to our
witnesses for being here today. I just recently heard from a
constituent who reported that her grandson had been accepted
into Penn State University. I represent Pennsylvania District.
In this case the young man is a star student, varsity
basketball player, on Student Council, volunteers with his
church.
It should be a happy occasion for him, but he does not know
at this point--the family does not know whether he will be able
to attend Penn State University because they will need the
financial aid that should be due them, and so this is a
difficult decision for them.
They do not know when they will get those answers. This is
an extremely frustrating hearing to me, in fact perhaps one of
the most frustrating hearings that I have been part of. It is
not only that student, we have heard from hundreds across the
district, certainly thousands, maybe millions. I do not know
how many across the country who are in a similar situation.
I have also heard, talked to at least three schools, these
are smaller schools in my district, talked to the presidents of
those who literally were not sure, still may not be sure
whether they could open on time because they are serving
populations that will need that financial aid.
At this point they should be fairly well locked in on how
many students will be attending their school, and they do not
know. This is affecting not only students, but it is affecting
the schools themselves as well. It is a disaster, so I am
amazed and disappointed that we literally are here.
It is not a timing issue. This is what is most frustrating.
It is not a timing issue. They have had 3 years to work on
this. It does not seem to be a money issue. They have not come
and asked for additional resources to roll this out. It just
seems to be either just pure bureaucratic incompetence, or they
just have not prioritized it.
I know the issue of student loan, you know, whether the
student loan forgiveness programs, keep constantly trying to go
around the Supreme Court thinking up new schemes. Whether that
directly affected this I do not know, probably. Certainly, they
paid more attention to that than they have the mandate to fix
the FAFSA process.
It is almost a pattern now. We have been alarmed by the
Department's shoddy data testing, their accounting practices,
notably, the Department failed two audits in 2 years. Their
independent auditor had to issue a disclaimer that they could
not trust Ed's basic calculations throughout their budget.
Mr. Kantrowitz, you mentioned in your testimony that the
Department initially refused to update its financial aid
formulas for inflation, which would have caused millions of
students to get less financial aid that was due them, and they
could not even do basic testing before FAFSA went live to
ensure that the information was calculated correctly.
As I said, it is affecting students everywhere. I get calls
frequently all the time to disband the Department of Education
altogether. People in my district believe that the Federal
Government shouldn't even have a Department of Education. Boy,
this sure does not make arguing to keep the Department of
Education any easier.
Maybe Mr. Kantrowitz, I will ask you. Given their track
record, what repercussions do you think this failure will have
on public trust in the integrity of its programs, and on
stewardship of taxpayer dollars?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, even in a normal year two million
students do not qualify for the Pell Grant because they did not
apply, and they would have qualified. Of the more than one
million would have gotten the maximum Pell Grant. I think we
are going to have it be far worse this year.
That saves the government some money, but not for the right
reason. The challenge is we are 7 months behind. Now if they
had started this process 7 months earlier, we would not be in
this situation. Clearly----
Mr. Smucker. I am running out of time, but you know, I will
just ask a question. Can we even make the case that we need a
Department of Education any longer?
Mr. Kantrowitz. Well, the problem is what is the
alternative? Would that be any better?
Mr. Smucker. Well, maybe we can get someone to run the
financial aid program better. I do not know. I mean we can
argue about the amount of financial aid. We can--someone
mentioned the impact on college costs, maybe that is something
we should be talking about, but we should never be arguing
about effectively administering the aid that has been made
available, but I am out of time, and I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would like to now recognize
Mr. Scott from Virginia.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, when we
started talking about the FAFSA Simplification Act, I was
Chairman of the Committee. Senator Lamar Alexander from
Tennessee was Chair of the Senate Committee. It was a major
priority of his. You could simplify the form, cut the number of
questions by two-thirds, and in simplification, you could
increase the number of students eligible, and increase the
amount of aid they could get.
That was the goal, but regrettably it had not worked out
that way so far. No one in this Committee on either side of the
aisle is happy with what is going on. Mr. Draeger, you keep
talking about there is a 6-month delay. Actually, it is a 6-
month delay after a 1-year extension, so it is worse than what
you have been explaining.
Ms. Cook, if the program had worked as expected, what would
the--how would the historical complexities of the FAFSA form
been addressed, and what would the benefits be for students and
family if it had been working as expected?
Ms. Cook. If the form had been working as expected we would
anticipate that we would have increased FAFSA completion rates,
which are important to us because they signal increased
enrollment and completion. We would have a faster process where
students, dependent students with their contributor parents
might experience FAFSAs that were record low completion times,
as low as 10 to 15 minutes, rather than 30 minutes to an hour.
Most importantly, as we have all talked about equity issues
here, we would have expanded Pell Grant eligibility to
additional students for higher awards.
Mr. Scott. Thank you. Ms. Feldman, you have been dealing
with this. Do you have a date by which you expect this to be
resolved?
Ms. Feldman. We have yet to be able to provide aid offers
to our students, which we usually do with their admissions. We
have tried hard to signal that they need to stick with us, that
it is going to be affordable, but it is hard to have them keep
trusting us when we just keep telling them they have to wait.
Mr. Scott. Has the Department given you a date by which you
would have confidence that you will be getting the information?
Ms. Feldman. Just yesterday they published some dates that
indicated that the remainder of the issues with the FAFSAs
would be resolved sometime beginning early May, so that is
about a month from now. We are hoping that at least for some
students we will be able to get them aid offers sooner.
Mr. Scott. Now if the system actually worked, what
information would you get from FAFSA, and what would you do
with that information?
Ms. Feldman. Sure. We would understand the student's
student aid index, that would tell us which of our aid programs
they are eligible for. We have a loans free program for
students below 200 percent of the poverty line. We just
announced a new program for essentially free tuition for
everyone from North Carolina with an income under $80,000.00.
We rely on Pell Grants and State grants so we would also
know the amounts of those things, so that we were able to show
students a complete picture of how affordable our institution
could be and hope they would enroll. We would also know a lot
more about what our fall enrollment would be as we have had to
extend our deadlines, and students are very reasonably waiting
until they have a real aid offer in hand to make a decision.
Mr. Scott. Now, if someone is low-income, especially
eligible for SNAP or Medicaid, why cannot you assume maximum
Pell and make an offer based on that information?
Ms. Feldman. You know. I have actually floated a few ideas
to our campus of alternative ways we might make offers, but
honestly, when we give students financial aid, we are using
taxpayer money from the State of North Carolina, and I think we
just do not want to be in a position where we are risking those
taxpayer dollars because we did not estimate correctly, so we
have not moved forward yet with any of those plans.
You might find us in that position if the delays continue.
Mr. Scott. Why is partial data not helpful?
Ms. Feldman. Well, if you were going to court, and you had
two-thirds of your deposition done, there would be a third of
the information missing. If you were doing your taxes, and you
only filled out the first three lines with your name, you know,
the government would not know what you earned and what you
owed.
We simply do not have a full picture. In some cases we have
no information because the match with the government or with
the IRS did not work, and no student aid index was calculated
or sent to us.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Owens. Thank you so much. I would like to now
recognize Ms. Houchin.
Ms. Houchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the
witnesses for testifying before us today. I appreciate your
time. I am frustrated to say the least that we even need to be
having this hearing, seeing how the Biden administration had 3
years to implement the FAFSA Simplification Act.
The updated free application for Federal student aid has
been anything but simple. I am a parent of two college
students, one in college, one yet to be, a senior in high
school. We experienced all of the things that have been
reported in trying to complete this.
Indiana, my home State, is one of 13 states that mandates
requirement of the FAFSA for high school graduation. Not only
are we adding to the stress of whether or not these students
can afford to attend college, in some cases we are literally
adding to the stress of their thought process, and whether or
not they will complete high school.
Now many of these states, including my State, have waivers,
but the question would be do parents, have they been
communicated to about the waiver process to decrease their
stress levels. The Department of Education also unbelievably
took a year and a half to even start working on this process
and have instead dedicated nearly all of their time to their
illegal student loan forgiveness scheme.
I have been hearing from school guidance counselors,
parents, universities across my State, about how far reaching
and disastrous this rollout has been. 18 million students each
year roughly fill out the FAFSA, and now we are seeing nearly
330,000 applications that have to be reprocessed due to the
Department pulling the wrong tax data from the form, an
inability to make corrections if students have made mistakes.
This rollout is par for the course for this Biden
administration, and it in my view is just yet another example
of their incompetence. I am certainly concerned about parents
and students not having the answers they need to make these
decisions, and being left in limbo.
Again, I am one of those parents. I am also concerned about
our universities experiencing uncertainly around enrollment
numbers and smaller fall cohorts than expected, resulting in
their inability to budget and forecast. At this point, there is
unfortunately no way to get back the time that has been wasted.
We have to consider now how the Department of Education will be
held to account, and how we can ensure that they will support
students and universities moving forward.
Ms. Feldman and Mr. Draeger, have either of you received
any form of support or guidance from the Department on how to
support students who are having difficulties with either
submitting or editing their FAFSA?
Ms. Feldman. We have received electronic announcements with
guidance about when things are expected to be corrected. We
have received information about a new concierge email service
for schools that are having trouble. We have also received
requests from the Department to help each other, which I will
say is a natural instinct of our community anyway.
Sometimes I find out a whole bunch of things on social
media that are happening, so in that sense.
Ms. Houchin. It is a little bit unbelievable that you are
getting you know, you do need to get information from social
media, and not the Department.
Ms. Feldman. Fair, and also you know, it has been a rich
source of means about financial aid on social media. I would
say there are ways in which they are providing support, it has
just been rapidly changing and revised, and sometimes not with
the most tone of partnership, thank you.
Mr. Draeger. I would say that the Department of Education
has put a lot more energy and resources into providing support
to institution's financial aid offices, and students in the
last several months than it had leading up to when the FAFSA
should have launched. As I pointed out previously,
unfortunately that is a little bit too late in the process to
be coming up with all of these resources.
I do think this hearing in Congress is having an impact.
Just last night, a new operational piece of guidance that was
far more direct than they had been in the weeks previous. We
hope that continues, and as we have also talked about the
college support strategy is providing boots on the ground
support to financial aid offices.
Again, it is coming after all of the crisis has hit. We are
looking for lessons learned so we can improve this going
forward, and I appreciate your personal experience with this,
and supporting the schools of Indiana.
Ms. Houchin. Quickly, with the time I have left, we have
heard from universities, calls for guaranteeing last year's aid
for students that are continuing their education. Is that
something that would help?
Mr. Draeger. I think that would be a matter of absolute
last resort.
Ms. Houchin. Okay.
Mr. Draeger. If the Department can bring online the
functionality that it is promising to be able to do in the next
couple of weeks, we will have turned a corner, and we are
hoping for that promise. Yes.
Ms. Houchin. Right. Thank you so much.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. I would now like to recognize
the Chair of the full Committee, Dr. Foxx.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and I want to thank our
witnesses for being with us today. It is a very serious issue
we are dealing with that affects millions of people all across
the country. I want to talk about responsibility, a trait
noticeably absent in the Department of Education's FAFSA
disaster.
Ms. Feldman, is it the responsibility of North Carolina
families to ensure the FAFSA is not riddled with technical
errors, and actually allow students to submit information, or
is it the Department's responsibility?
Ms. Feldman. That is the responsibility of the Department
of Education.
Mrs. Foxx. Mr. Draeger, thank you for being here again. Is
it the responsibility of financial aid administrators to ensure
FAFSA data is processed promptly, and calculated accurately, or
is it the Department's responsibility?
Mr. Draeger. Department of Education.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you. Mr. Kantrowitz, is it the
responsibility of Congress to implement a bipartisan law passed
over 3 years ago, or is it the Department's responsibility?
Mr. Kantrowitz. It is the U.S. Department of Education.
Congress passes laws, the executive branch implements them.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you for clarifying that. Not just for the
Department, but for the American people who often wonder why we
are not putting people in jail, okay. During the Biden
administration, the Department has certainly been busy, of
course being busy does not mean being effective.
It certainly does not mean providing benefit for the
American people. Mr. Kantrowitz, you have worked in the FAFSA,
on the FAFSA for 25 years. Would you describe implementing the
FAFSA as one of the most important duties of the Office of
Federal Student Aid and its Chief Operating Officer Richard
Cordrey?
Mr. Kantrowitz. It is a bread and butter issue. This is one
of the primary responsibilities of the U.S. Department of
Education and the Office of Federal Student Aid.
Mrs. Foxx. All right. Ms. Feldman, in your years of
institutional experience with financial aid, have you ever seen
a worse FAFSA process?
Ms. Feldman. Well, sadly I am old enough to remember when
it was all on paper, so hopefully this will be a little better
than that when it is done, but the years nothing but a disaster
so far.
Mrs. Foxx. Do you feel like we are going to have a smooth
process in 2025?
Ms. Feldman. I hope it will be a lot smoother, but it is
hard to know, and I do not anticipate right now that it feels
likely we will be ready in October, the usual date.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you. Mr. Draeger, instead of implementing
the FAFSA, it is now crystal clear that the Department spent
its time, resources, and staff over these past 3 years on
political projects, some of which are unconstitutional. Do you
believe the Department's political agenda was more helpful to
the American people instead of ensuring 18 million students
have a working and timely FAFSA?
Mr. Draeger. My hope is that this Committee, bipartisanly
will dig into what were the shortfalls of this implementation.
Whatever the Department was working on, if it detracted from
the FAFSA, we are all now reaping the consequences of those
actions, and millions of students are now stuck in limbo
wondering how they are going to pay for college.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you again, thank you for clarifying that
also. This country deserves public leaders who fulfill their
duties rather than shirk responsibilities and point the finger
of blame at others. I often say that my middle initial A,
stands for accountability. Now is the time for Secretary
Cardona to explain his abysmal leadership to the American
people.
It is clear something needs to change. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Owens. Thank you. Thanks everyone for your
testimony. I would like to now recognize Mr. Scott for his
closing remarks.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank our witnesses
for your testimony. Today's testimony underscores the critical
need for swift action and accountability regarding FAFSA
accessibility, but we also need to get the program on track.
FAFSA Simplification Act was supposed to streamline the process
and expand eligibility, but this year's setbacks continue to
jeopardize opportunities for countless students.
We see this in the alarming decline in FAFSA submissions,
particularly among low-income and minority students, and so as
many high schoolers rapidly approach graduation day, urgency
mounts for clear guidance and support from the Department of
Education, so that the students and colleges can plan for the
upcoming school year.
Again Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing, and
thank our witnesses for their testimony.
Mr. Owens. Thank you. I just want to say first of all thank
you so much for your passion, for your understanding of this
industry, and for being here to really educate American people
to where we are, and the threat we now have, really, to our
system that we have been used to for so long.
Also, as I read your comments, your testimony, each of you
mentioned how hard the ground--those that are rolling up the
sleeves, that are actually working 16 hours a day and weekends
to make this happen. As we walk through this process, realize
we are talking about leadership.
We are really trying to make this thing work out. To the
priority, I read this to one of you, that there was, in 2021,
at the very beginning of the Biden administration, there was an
appointment to the Chief Operating Officer for Federal Student
Aid, Richard Cordray.
Mr. Cordray has absolutely no experience and student aid
experience like you guys right here in front of us. What he
was, he was a litigator expert from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau that used their attempts to wave debt.
I think we see from the beginning where the priorities
were, and we cannot dictate that this is where we should put
our energy then we will have the kind of results we have right
now. It is time we ask ourselves a big and overdue question,
what is the ultimate purpose of the Department of Education.
Most Americans think it is to educate, to prepare our
children to be the most intelligent and competitive in the
world. Over the last few years leaders in the Department of
Education instead have brought pure chaos to students seeking
education and to institutions who have mandated this to provide
education.
Leadership and the Department have been distracted,
undisciplined, arrogant, and who is paying the price of this
failed leadership? Our most vulnerable at-risk Americans. The
low-to moderate-income students, the first generation college
students, and underrepresented.
Due to the chaos of the last 3 years, in the upcoming years
they will have brought collateral damage. There will be some
vulnerable small colleges across this country who will not be
able to absorb the 20 to 30 percent drop in enrollment. Those
in this position will shutter.
There will be additional damage to small businesses and
towns who depend on revenue generated by these thriving college
campuses. If this is not enough, the Biden administration
recently found a bandwidth, they issued new ruling to threaten
the existence of another educational sector, the career and
technical institutions. The DC bureaucrats are demanding that
this institution reduce the length of their curriculum, with no
consideration of the impact that this will have on the outcome.
If they do not change the curriculum in an arbitrary and
impossible timeline, they will not receive Federal funding.
Those who cannot meet these demands of arbitrary DC ruling,
will face shuttering. Just like that FAFSA debacle we're now
dealing with the attack of the Department of Education on
career and technical institutions.
Those that are hurt the most are the low-and moderate-
income students, first generation college students, and
underrepresented students, and those again at risk. Personally,
I begin to wonder, based on this remarkable success at failure,
if the true goal of our Department of Education is to educate.
There is no accountability, no shame, no I am sorry, we will
get this right next time, and there is no sense of priority.
As we now look at where we are today, I am convinced that
there will be 18 million students and families that will
remember that they were not the priority of these last two or 3
years. That the priority was to make sure there was a campaign
promise put in place to forgive debt.
It is great for the President's future, but it is terrible
for our kids' future, and that is not the American way. We have
always put our kids first before our needs because we see this
vision of a much greater, more perfect union. I think there is
going to be a result, there is going to be accountability.
I want to say this also. I am so impressed No. 1, by what
you have said today, but also everyone that is sat in the
Ranking Member's seat, has commented on how much we need to
make this work. We have a bipartisan agreement here. We are
going to make this work.
So many of our children are not being serviced correctly,
and those most vulnerable are being hurt the most. I want to
thank everyone again for your comments, and your addition to
our education, and I would like to thank again the witnesses
here, and without objections, there being no further business,
this Subcommittee now stands adjourned. Thank you so much.
[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]