David M. Perry: The hardest thing about getting into college should be actually getting into a college. But instead in America, the hardest thing about getting into college tends to be figuring out how to pay for it. On the FAFSA disaster. From @cnn.com.

The hardest thing about getting into college should be actually getting into a college. But instead in America, the hardest thing about getting into college tends to be figuring out how to pay for it. On the FAFSA disaster. From @cnn.com.

Opinion: The FAFSA fiasco is a huge problem for students and colleges | CNNwww.cnn.com The FAFSA debacle is prompting existential questions for everyone involved in higher education as American students begin to make decisions about where to go to college, writes David M. Perry.

"When it comes to college costs, there could be a better way. Public higher education could, and should, offer a high quality and low or no cost pathway to a college degree...Many states currently offer free college to some or all residents — albeit usually after filling out a FAFSA."

(with the usual link to @pamherd.bsky.social and @donmoyn.bsky.social whose work on administrative burdens always informs everything I write about governmental systems)

I get so fed up with halfway measures on things like this. If higher ed is a right, then "aid" should go equally to a rich kid whose parents only pay on their terms; as to a kid whose middle-class parents can "afford" it, IF they don't have more kids or want to retire; as to an orphan in poverty.

Means tested programs, always result in eligible people not accessing the benefits for which they are eligible. Rich kids are still gonna go to Harvard. But if they want to come to my public university instead, they are super welcome.

yeah i had to put my abusive dad’s info on my fafsa or i risked being investigated for fraud. every year of school I was forced to interact with this man for hours in order to get the info i needed

Yep, that's me, I had to put my rat bastard father's info on my FAFSA even though he'd disappeared after the divorce and never paid a dime of child support or alimony. Had to use his income & profession too! Meant I didn't qualify for Pell Grant & only got minimum loan $. This was the 80s tho.

i had to be the middleman between my recently divorced, not-speaking parents to get his financial info, which took ongoing attempts. i did get a pell grant though because he'd been laid off

Now you know why i graduated at age 28.

I saw that in my sibling's and my stepfamilies. I'm so sorry.

We passed a wealth tax that would only go to education and transportation. So now community college is free for most people in the state. For many, community college is an ideal choice. But university vs college should be just that—a choice.

State: over 4,500 students utilizing free community college programwww.westernmassnews.com We now know more than 4,500 students enrolled in one of the state’s 15 community colleges tuition-free, thanks to the MassReconnect program last fall.

I suspect though that students still have to fill out a FAFSA to qualify for the MA program. There's lots of great free community college programs (and I love CCs. A bit part of my job is advising people who transfer from two-year schools) interestingly enough in lots of very different states.

(Big not bit. A big part.)

Yes, the FAFSA is required for MassReconnect

FAFSA is a barrier for first generation students, those for whom English isn’t a first language, and just those overburdened by paperwork. It shouldn’t be part of our system. Thanks for making this argument.

YEP. On top of that - financial abuse, which is what you describe in that first example - is a form of domestic abuse. Rich parents can tell their gay kid to be not gay if he wants to go to college and... what other options are there for that kid?

Other than the gay part, that was me. My old man was a tax cheat and refused to fill out the Canadian version of the FAFSA and also wouldn’t pay for college for me unless I went to the school he liked. This is a real thing that happens to kids.

Hi! Same hat! Mine refused to give me the information I needed to fill out the FAFSA too. It happens *a lot*.

I wasn't trying to suggest this didn't happen to you or you didn't know it does, apologies if it came across that way.

I still reflexively cringe when I see that damn acronym, and I finished undergrad 10 years ago. It was such a fucking pain because my mom didn't have taxable income (we lived on her veteran's benefits and not enough child support).

Every year filling out FAFSA turned into a shouting match between us followed by a 3-way volley of emails and phone calls between the two of us and the financial aid office before they verified "Yes, they're poor enough for her to get a full Pell grant."

Another object lesson in "Poverty is fucking stressful, y'all."

I had a guardian angel by way of a financial aid assistant at CWRU who helped me through all this mess. Ms Kathy Van Leer 😇 I’ll never forget her getting me through college.

This is why I'm pursuing a legal "disabled" designation, because none of the financial aid programs will stop expecting us to be a two income household without it.

Right after high school, I got nothing from FAFSA. I used a high school program and voc rehab to pay for my first 2 years of college, but lack of disability accommodations led to a traumatic experience and me dropping out until I could complete FAFSA without including my parents’ income.

The vast, long-term success of California's 3-tier college system (UC, CSU, extremely strong network of community colleges) suggests that in an optimal system, getting into college should *NOT* be hard.

Thank you for this! Also, “bureaucracy-of-suspicion” as you describe it, is on the nose.

FAFSA denied my family financial aid after evaluating our assets and declaring that we had $50,000 worth of furniture.

FAFSA thinks families should sacrifice everything they own before sending a kid to school. Don'twant to sit on the floor or sleep on a bare mattress? What kind of parents are you???

That well-known lucrative moneymaking venture, selling your possessions secondhand

Ask any Victorian widow.

I love that we’re watching the system collapse in real time and we still won’t do anything about it because people are like “Ick, socialism.”

And school districts have added this as a thing to be competitive about - highest percentage of students with completed FAFSA! - and families & students who are being pressured to get it done can’t even access the forms. Add in the stress of not knowing if you can afford where you want to go now…

Boy - does this make me appreciate Canada. My two kids got into the university’s of their choice, did not require loans to fund it, and it didn’t bankrupt me…

Is this mishandling at all deliberate? As part of the seeming efforts to destroy public ed?

I don't think so. I think the Biden Admin and its contractor messed up in some ways, and didn't have the resources to succeed in another ways (which wasn't so much deliberate as the usual thing where Congress mandates stuff but doesn't fund it).

Thank you for answering. Our daughter is a HS senior and was lucky to get a full-ride Stamps Scholarship, but it's been frustrating to see how her cohort is in limbo (or else rich).

I mean ... it might be deliberate, but evidence suggests incompetence/structural challenges.

It’s three contractors fwiw (front end, back end, new environments for back end)

i think it was 100% deliberate. millions of students dropped thier student loans after covid, so the gov sees it as a bad investment now. plus it affected mostly low income applicants.

21 years ago I went to one (1) semester at a college that REQUIRED you do do a FAFSA, and then made you "earn" the rest of your tuition doing manual labor on campus. If they would've let me work in the library my life might have been different, but they put me in the cafeteria, so... 🤷

The most important things I learned at college: - Food service is hell - the Bible is multiple documents in multiple languages written across several hundred years, and Mark was the earliest written of the canon gospels - I can sleep through half my classes and still get a 4.0 gpa

Ironically, Canada has kinda the opposite problem. Domestic tuition has been capped at 2% raises per year for the past 20-25 years. Now, post-secondary institutions rely heavily on international student tuition which is 3-5X higher than domestic.

I read the article and I still don't really understand the FAFSA thing. Is it a student aid/loan program? 😅

Its the form the federal government uses for determining student aid/loans based on income.

It sounds like a nightmare!

I am literally hoping one of my kids is willing to learn German.

I had no idea I was in the first cohort to ever fill a FAFSA! 25 years later trying to do it as an expat was so impossibly difficult I wound up sending my son to college in Malaysia

It is simple, more student --> more money. 😂

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