Millions of Americans need financial aid to afford college tuition. For those who are using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form to tap into the millions the government provides students, changes to the new form for 2024-25 have put some at risk of getting a smaller amount of aid. The new form prevents immigrant parents without social security numbers from filling out the online form.
The recent difficulties follow a delay in releasing the online form. It was supposed to be available in October as usual, but the Department of Education released the form at the end of last December. High school students start reviewing the online form as they prepare for their future, but there are also older students who plan to return to school — or venture to college for the first time — who need financial aid to get an associate degree from a community college or a bachelor’s degree from a university.
Applicants who haven’t yet enrolled or been accepted to a college won’t get the financial aid until they are accepted because financial aid is distributed through public colleges and universities.
Jessica Hogan, the associate director of financial aid for technical processing at Texas Woman’s University, said the Department of Education added a question to the new FAFSA form that has likely tripped up applicants who need all the help they can get to afford tuition.
“For the application itself, students are basically divided into two different groups. There are dependent students and independent students. Similar to when you’re doing taxes,” Hogan said. “The only caveat to that is that to become an independent, you have to meet a certain criteria.”
On the FAFSA form, students are questioned about their circumstances.
Students can be considered independent if they are 24 or older, married or serving active duty in the U.S. military or have a child or are supporting a dependent minor. Students who are younger than 24 with neither parent living, or who are a ward of the court, can also be declared independent.
“The next question is new, and it’s actually a good one,” Hogan said. “This one is saying if you have an additional circumstance — like there’s been abuse in the home, which [is a question that] wasn’t there before — so that question itself is actually kind of nice because it puts them as a provisional independent student, and that means they don’t need their parent information.”
Previously, students who might have been estranged from their parents or who were in homes where there was abuse would often not have parental information, Hogan said, and their FAFSA forms would be rejected.
“We would have to kind of figure it out for those students,” Hogan said.
Hogan said that the difficulty for applicants probably comes with the very next question regarding unsubsidized loan funds, which asks if parents are going to submit their financial information.
“And the way it’s worded is, if you answer it wrong, then it will automatically say basically that your parents refuse, and you’re not going to get any funding,” Hogan said. “They qualify for nothing except for an unsubsidized loan, which is the loan that you get that actually accumulates interest while you’re in school. So out of the two loans, it’s not the best one. But they would get something but that’s it.”
Hogan said applicants can still log in to their FAFSA forms and correct them. So, if an applicant gets confused and answers a question incorrectly, they can address it.
The delays and the confusion over parts of the form haven’t put TWU financial aid staffers behind, Hogan said, because they always wait for the financial aid system to complete updates. In the meantime, Hogan said, students who need help should seek it through their school’s financial aid division.
“What was really nice is that the Department of Education sent out a demo of the way that the FAFSA works,” Hogan said. “We’ve all gone through the demo and actually filled it out ourselves, or as a student, just to see what it’s like, which is extremely helpful.
“That way we can just pull it up when our students are talking to us. So they at least have really good tools for us to use for that.”