Troubled FAFSA rollout complicates college acceptance for some seniors
Los Angeles — Oscar Garcia of South Los Angeles is just weeks away from taking his last steps as a high school senior, and his first steps toward a college degree.
Garcia said attending college “means having an opportunity to get out of here.”
It’s an opportunity made possible through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
“FAFSA, man, they have a lot of issues,” Garcia told CBS News. “It always gave me, like, some errors, or something. Yes, it was just pretty tedious.”
After a botched rollout of last year’s FAFSA application under the Biden administration, it was delayed again this year, with students encountering error messages and glitches on the site. Making things more challenging were the unprecedented cuts to the Department of Education last month, impacting nearly half of the office of Federal Student Aid, which is responsible for managing FAFSA.
Garcia, who will be attending Los Angeles Trade Tech Community College in the fall, said he tried to call the Federal Student Aid Information Center for help “more times than what I can count. At some point I just wanted to stop.”
Lina McCormick-Morin, deputy director of the Southern California College Attainment Network — an education equity group that seeks to help underrepresented students achieve a college education, helps low-income students navigate the FAFSA system.
“The process is really grueling,” McCormick-Morin said. “It is genuinely like filing taxes and being audited at the same time.”
Thursday is National College Decision Day, which is the deadline for when most college-bound students have to declare which school they will attend in the fall.
McCormick-Morin has seen college dreams put on hold, as only 58% of eligible California high school seniors successfully submitted FAFSA applications for the upcoming school year, according to the California Student Aid Commission.
“It is difficult to see what is efficient about cutting the working capacity of any department that was already understaffed,” McCormick-Morin said.
University of Southern California junior Stephani Jaramillo and California State University, Northridge junior Jose Pablo-Corona told CBS News they don’t have safety nets — they only have FAFSA.
“I worry that without that help, I won’t be able to continue my education,” Pablo-Corona said. “So I’m pretty worried.”
Jaramillo said that “for me, financial aid is hope, it’s a stepping stone to reaching a potential future that I’ve been looking forward to my whole life.”
Now, both are concerned whether they will see their financial aid in time to complete college.
“Everyone chases some sort of American dream,” Jaramillo said. “No matter what it looks like, some sort of, like, happiness and stability. For me, that’s my education.”
