Financial aid professionals and students from schools on the Central Coast met with Representative Salud Carbajal about FAFSA, an application form used by college students to apply for federal student aid.
Carbajal said the purpose of the meeting was, “to get suggestions from them to address the rollout of the FAFSA financial aid application process because it has been a roll out that has fallen short.”
He said the Department of Education intended to make the process easier, but the rollout this year did not go as planned.
Maureen McRae Goldberg, director of financial aid at Santa Barbara City College, was at the meeting and spoke with KCBX. She said in addition to website usability issues, students cannot get their questions answered even when they call the FAFSA helpline.
“They are spending two to three hours on hold. Sometimes the person doesn’t know the answer to the question and sometimes they’re getting hung up on,” she said.
Goldberg is concerned that some students will not enroll this year because of uncertainties about financial aid. She said the application is especially difficult for first-generation students who may also encounter language barriers.
“Following Covid – where we know we lost a lot of students – for the ones that are trying to come back, we put this impossible task in front of them,” she said.
Santa Barbara City College, UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly SLO, Allan Hancock, Westmont College, and local high schools shared their concerns.
With deadlines quickly approaching, the group told Carbajal the situation is a crisis. He said he’ll take their suggestions back to Washington DC to advocate for changes to the process.
Carbajal also announced that he re-introduced Degrees not Debt legislation to raise the amount of federal Pell grants awarded to college students. You can find more information here.
