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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Department of Education says a calculation error was discovered in hundreds of thousands of student financial aid applications sent to colleges this month and they must be reprocessed. This follows a series of other blunders that amount to intimidation. This year’s university applications will be delayed further..
The department announced Friday that a contractor working for the federal government incorrectly calculated financial aid formulas for more than 200,000 students.Information submitted to assist the university prepare a financial aid package But they now have to be recalculated, even as the department grapples with a backlog of more than 4 million other financial aid applications.
A statement from the Ministry of Education said the issue does not affect the 1.3 million applications that were successfully processed and distributed to universities this month. Officials said the error had been corrected and “will not affect future records.”
Because the department only began sending records within the last two weeks, it is unlikely that many, if any, students received scholarship offers based on incorrect information. Once a university receives that information, it typically takes several weeks to assemble a financial aid package.
Students applying to universities this year are left in limbo as they await a decision from the Ministry of Education. overhaul Free Application for Federal Student Aid. This form, known as the FAFSA, is used to determine eligibility for the Federal Pell Grant, and colleges and states use it to award their own financial aid to students.
The update was intended to simplify forms, but it took several months longer than expected. This reduces the time universities have to offer financial aid to students, and the time students have to decide where to enroll.
“This is another unforced error that will likely cause additional processing delays for students,” said Justin Drager, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
After falling behind multiple times, “all the mistakes will add up and will be felt keenly by all students who rely on need-based financial aid to make their post-secondary dreams a reality.” ” he added.
The recent failure involves the Student Aid Index, a new formula used to determine a student’s level of financial need after submitting a FAFSA application. An agency memo sent to universities on Friday said the department forgot to account for certain financial assets, such as investments, savings and total cash, for some students.
As a result, these students had lower student aid indexes, indicating they had more financial need than they actually had.
The ministry is correcting these students’ records while encouraging universities to make their own calculations and create “interim aid packages.”
Draeger opposed that idea, saying universities can only work with “valid, correct data.”
“Submitting erroneous FAFSA data and asking thousands of schools to calculate and reconcile federal formulas in real time is neither feasible nor realistic,” he said.
Advocates worry that this year’s confusing process could deter students, especially those whose finances are a big part of their decision, from attending college altogether.
Senate Republicans are requesting a hearing with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to discuss “serious concerns” about the FAFSA rollout.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said in a video message Friday that it is “not right” to ask universities to correct the department’s mistakes.
“We should have done it right the first time and we should have done it right three months ago,” said Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We need more accountability, more responsibility and more trust from the Department of Education.”
The notoriously time-consuming FAFSA form was the subject of an overhaul in 2020 through a bipartisan bill in Congress. The bill promised to simplify the question format from 100 questions to fewer than 40, and also changed the basic formula for student aid and expanded eligibility to more low-income students.
However, this update has been marred by delays and technical glitches.
Typically, this form would be available to fill out in October, but the Department of Education didn’t have it ready until late December. Even at that point, officials weren’t ready to start processing and sending forms to states and universities, which only began this month.
Along the way, the department is scrambling to fix numerous bugs. In its early stages, this process did not adequately account for inflation. Another glitch made it impossible for parents to fill out forms if they didn’t have a Social Security number. This meant that many students who were U.S. citizens or permanent residents but did not have parents could not apply.
The department says those issues have been resolved and it is now expediting the processing and distribution of millions of student applications to universities and states. The agency announced that it had processed 1.5 million of the approximately 6 million applications it had received so far.
The department said in a statement that it “will continue to provide a large volume of records” over the coming weeks. “Our focus remains on supporting students and families through this process and helping colleges submit offers of aid as quickly as possible.”
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