Transcripts For CSPAN3 Hearing 20240702

Subcommittee on Higher Education. The subcommittee will come to order. The chair is authorized to call recess at any time. Welcome to todays hearing entitled fafsa fail, examining impacts to students, family and schools. There comes a time for students across america to apply for college. The free application for federal student aid, fafsa, is a critical tool. For many, fafsa is the only access to Postsecondary Education and opens doors and provides Financial Assistance to individuals seeking to pursue academic conditions with regards to their background. In 2020 legislators and policymakers sought to make the process even more accessible by passing the fafsa simplification act. With the financial burden of colleges each year, it was incredibly important the form ease the fafsa for families. The new law streamlines the long and complex application process and in some cases the students could see the number of questions on the form shrink from 818 from 103 on the previous fafsa application. As weve learned over the past three years, the administrations greatest success is its failure at everything it tends to do. Today the committee paused for a familiar challenge oversight. Despite our efforts, the department of educations fafsa rollout was meyered in delays and dysfunction, without accountability, the department of educations botched application threatens to harm students, families and institutions. The fafsa simplification has been a federal law since the Biden Administration, day one. Yet that did not stop the department of education from pursuing five months for punting five months from the official launch date of july 2023 to a soft launch on december 2023. Five months. The department of education did not did roll out the new fafsa and students were met with sporadic glitches and queries with technical issues. Some students could not complete the format all. For those who managed to complete the form, the transition of key numbers to schools were slow. Without timely data, schools cannot forecast budgets or prepare Financial Aid packages. Compounding the issue, the department of education has made multiple data errors, rendering hundreds of thousands of records inaccurate and unusable for schools. Unfortunately, this may only be the tip of the iceberg. New errors are revealed every week and may be a new one by the time this hearing is over. The failures impact the taxpayers and institutions can be seen with a estimated 20 drop in enrollment this year. Low income students requiring access for aid will be the hardest hit and these delays dont account for next years fafsa which will almost certainly not be ready by october. Its unfathomable the office of federal student aid received over 2 billion last year. So in essence, the american taxpayer has paid 2 billion to give their children a year or two of chaos and anxiety. Fafsa was created in 1992 with the h. G. A. Reauthorization act. Weve had 32 years of a functioning system that served hundreds of millions of students and thousands of institutions. Within three years, the Biden Administration department of education has managed to bring the educational industry to a possible Game Changing crisis. So what is bidens answer to this debacle. Hes asked for an additional 625 million to add to the office of federal student aid budget. Were left to conclude instead of doing the job it was tasked to do which is helping over 18 Million Students or potential students apply for fafsa, this administration opted to waste months of time and energy on a reelection strategy, and unconstitutional student loan forgiveness scheme. Our answer to this, not a dollar more until we figure this out. Students, schools and institutions deserve answers. It is our responsibility as congress to held the executive branch accountable. I look forward to working together with members from this committee to learn from this rollout and ensure the smooth, clear, and honest fafsa process moving forward. I yield to the Ranking Member for her opening statement. Ms. Waters thank you for the witnesses to coming today. We know a College Degree is the most fastest way to economic mobility for america. Unfortunately, for many lowincome students, particularly those at hbcus such as Florida Memorial University in south florida where i live, the cost of a College Degree remains out of reach without federal student aid. Ms. Wilson for years the pell grants helped to be somebodys students achieve the promise of Higher Education. This is why in 2020, democrats and republicans in Congress Passed the fafsa simplification act which aimed to streamline the free application for federal student assistance form and expand student aid eligibility especially for those who usually would not be able to afford to go to college. Sadly, the holdup with this law raised questions about whether going to college in the fall is even doable for those who cant foot the bill. Students needed their Financial Aid information months ago to make College Decisions, yet many still dont have that information today. Id like to remind everyone that College Decision day should be a joyous event where students declare where theyll go in the fall and is may 1, less than a month away. And we dont want children all dressed up on that day with no place to go. I even have a signing day in my district where the boys and the 5,000 role models of excellence sign just like athletes, but they are signing for academic scholarships. But guess what . Many students wont even have what they need to make that choice. Additionally, this has made things more complicated for colleges and High School Counselors as well. They, just like students, have had to quickly adapt to the frequent changes from the department of education. These setbacks put decades of progress in jeopardy, slamming the breaks on efforts to widen access to Higher Education and Financial Stability for students of color, first generation students, and those from lowincome backgrounds. According to the National College Attainment Network, only 32. 3 of students from lowincome high schools completed the fafsa form. 32. 9 decrease from the previous year. And only 32. 2 of students in high minority high schools have completed the form, but 33. 3 decrease from the previous year. This stark reality directly imposes the intended purpose of the simplification act serving as a slap in the face to students wanting to be somebody and achieve the promise of Higher Education. While i agree that holding the department accountable and investigate its mishandling is crucial, our immediate priority, immediate priority, must be ensuring students and their families have the necessary resources to make informed decisions about their future. We must also ensure that schools and organizations are prepared to assist them. The clock is ticking and students need answers now. Id like to request inclusion in the record, the tampa bay time, entitled floridas student aid request plunge, how many will delay or even skip college. And i want to note theres a graph showing federal student aid applications were lowest among floridas poorest students. No objection. Thank you. Pursuant to Committee Rules h. C. All who want to introduce written statements may do so submitting them to the clerk in microsoft word format by 5 00 p. M. , 14 days after this hearing, april 24, 2024. Without objection, the hearing world will remain open 14 days to allow statements and materials referenced during the hearing to be submitted to the official hearing record. Mr. Owens id like now to turn to introduce our four distinguished witnesses. First witness is mr. Mark cantowits who is president of cerebral institute, cerebral which is located sorry about that. Which is located in skokie, illinois. Our next witness is justin, the president and c. E. O. Of the National Student for Financial Aid administrators located in washington, d. C. Third witness is ms. Kim cook, c. E. O. Of National College Attainment Network located in washington, d. C. Our final witness is Rachel Fieldman who is the vice provost for enrollment at university of North Carolina, chapel hill, located in chapel hill, North Carolina. Thank you so much. We thank the witnesses for being here today and for giving your testimony and pursuant to the rules, id like to ask you to limit your oral presentations, five minute summary of your written statement. Id like to remind the witnesses to be aware of their responsibility to provide Accurate Information to the subcommittee. Id like to start off with recognizing mr. Kantowitz. I thank you for convening the hearing on fafsa fail, examining the impact on students, families and schools, and for inviting me to testify before the u. S. House subcommittee on Higher Education and Work Force Development this morning. My name is mark kantrowitz. In 1996 i developed a prototype of an online fafsa that led to the fafsa being available on the web. Since then ive provided Public Comment on draft fafsas every year and wrote a bestselling book about the fafsa and served on several websites about Financial Aid. My mission it to provide practical information and tools to students and their families so they can make important decisions on planning and paying for college. I am pleased to have my opportunity to share my insights with the committee today. The rollout of the 20242025 fafsa have been plagued by delays, errors and communication failures. This has been a frustrating and impossible process for students, families, colleges, and scholarship providers. There have been numerous missed deadlines, long delays, broken promises and i. T. Errors and full call centers and a lack of transparency with the delays being portrayed in an overly optimistic fashion. The goal of fafsa simplification was to make it easier for students and their families to file the fafsa, thereby eliminating it as a barrier to College Success by low income students, First Generation College students, underrepresented students, and other at risk students. The launch of the new form has been a disaster in this regard. Lets review how we got here. Congress passed the fafsa simplification act on december 27, 2020, effective for the 20232024 award year. When the u. S. Department of education said they couldnt implement the simplified fafsa as scheduled, Congress Passed the fafsa simplification technical implications act in 2022 to delay implementation until 20242025. The contract for the simplified fafsa wasnt awarded until march of 2022, 15 months after passage of the fafsa simplification act. The u. S. Department of education didnt launch the fafsa until december 30 of 2023, three months after the usual october 1 start date. The fafsa was open for only half an hour that day. Problems prevented many students and families from filing the new fafsa. 15 of these problems remained unresolved. When students and families called the federal Student Aid Center for help, they spent hours on hold. Calls and email messages went unanswered. The u. S. Department of education didnt initially implement inflationary adjustments in the fafsa Financial Aid formulas as required by the fafsa simplification act, despite being told about this problem in may of 2023. They didnt decide to fix the problem until january 2024 after learning middle income students would lose an average of about 1,600 in Financial Aid and high income students an average of 4600. On january 30, 2024, the day colleges were supposed to start receiving processed facia data, the u. S. Department of education announced another unprecedented sixweek delay. When fafsa processing began in mid march of 2024, applicants werent able to make corrections yielding high error rates. There were also errors that affect about a 1 4 of all fafsas such as errors in dependent Student Access and errors in tax data. Applicants will have a few weeks to make the most momentous decision of their lives. There are 2. 8 million fewer fafsas filed this year as compared with the same time last year. A 15 drop overall. The drop in College Enrollment may be worse than during the pandemic causing some colleges to close. Several factors contributed to the fafsa fiasco. Rather than just remove questions to simplify the fafsa, the u. S. Department of education decided to change everywhere everywhere all at once including an overhaul of the antiquated fafsa infrastructure. At the same time there was the restart of repayment for federal Student Loans, proposals for student loan forgiveness, and the new save income driven repayment plan. There was inadequate testing of the new fafsa before launch. Testing was an afterthought, not part of the original development plan. More time, staffing, funding and testing and better prioritization of existing problems may have helped. I want you to thank for you taking an interest in the simplified fafsa and for inviting me to share my thoughts on the matter. Id be happy to answer any questions on this or other topics. Mr. Owens thank you, mr. Kantrowitz. I appreciate it. Thank you. Next witness is mr. Draeger. Mr. Draeger my name is Justin Draeger who represents 3,000 university and Career School Financial Aid offices and today ill give their perspective. I want to take us back in time a couple months to january 30, 2024. That day will live in the collective trauma of most Financial Aid offices across the country. That was the day that schools were expecting to receive roughly 3 million three million fafsa files from the u. S. Department of education. To be clear, to the students who had completed the fafsa up to that point, it was anything but smooth sailing. Theyd already gone through a form that was only available at certain times of the day and riddled with glitches, to put it mildly. By january 30th, that was the day the department had told schools theyd start to receive fafsa files and schools were already months behind at that point. They need those files so they can start to put together Financial Aid packages, things like pell grants and supplemental grants and needbased scholarships and state grants and workstudy. So you can understand they were very anxious on this day to get started. At that point in the process, schools had already started sending out Early Admissions. Schools were in the coming weeks going to start sending out regular admissions. By that point, students had already started receiving admissions decisions. What they didnt know and make they still dont know today is how theyre going to pay for it. So youll understand that on january 30, as they were anxiously waiting at their desks for those fafsa files they were aghast in what instead they received was a notice from the department of education that fafsa files would be delayed for another two months. Now, january 30th wasnt the first day of bad news. But it was the straw that broke the camels back and turned this rollout from a hardship into a crisis. January 30th, communication, that communication fits a pattern thats been repeated throughout this launch and negatively impacting every school, every student, and every family in your strict. And what is that pattern . Its a lastminute communication from the department of education throwing schools and students and families into chaos. Its drastic and farreaching policy decisions making everyone do 90degree turns if not 180degree directional changes. And its bad news buried in celebratory publicity. And thats usually stuff thats reserved for press releases and thats fine. I come from the world of p. R. And communications, but stuff thats usually in press releases has now made its way into operational releases. And this isnt just a petty list of grievances. This really adds up to a crisis of credibility for the department of education. And that brings me to today. My written testimony lays out with painstaking detail where we are. But i want to wrap up with really two points. Overhauling the fafsa was a big deal. It was a big operational lift. It was necessary and it was important, but maybe the thing i want to highlight most of all, it was congressionally mandated bipartisanly. And when Congress Gives any administration a legislative mandate, it should be the top priority of that administration. My second point is we are in an awful place today. Schools have all the fafsa information they need from the department of education. But the department estimates 20 of the files the schools have are riddled with errors. And another 20 of the files on top of that on average dont have the numbers the Financial Aid offices need to actually calculate any awards. That means 40 of the fafsa files that the schools have are not usable. To calculate Financial Aid packages for students. Thats on average. Some schools are higher. Heres the hard truth, and i dont take any pleasure in being here to say this today, but when you have a crisis of credibility, schools dont trust more errors wont be found tomorrow, that the data they have today is credible, or that guidance wont change tomorrow. And schools are stuck in paralysis. And not because the department is purposefully misleading anyone. But because e. D. Itself may not know where the next errors to be found. Im glad to report the department is reporting more frequently and theyre doing more web nazr and throwing more webinars and throwing more resources at this and as of last night, their communications are more direct. Im not here to say all hope is lost. The form is better. I can say it because ive seen it work. I hope we can salvage this year. Im looking forward to the conversation that follows these testimonies and thank you for holding this hearing. Mr. Owens thank you. I appreciate that. Id now like to recognize ms. Cook. Ms. Cook chairman owens, Ranking Members and members of the subcommittee, thank for you the invitation to speak this morning. We prioritize staff completions because it aligns with our vision, all students, especially first generation students, students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, and those from low income backgrounds have an equitable opportunity to achieve social and economic mobility through Higher Education. And weve long implicated for fafsa implication and built a coalition of Partner Organizations to champion it. Completion of the fafsa is one of the best predictors of whether a High School Senior can go on to college. Seniors who complete the fafsa are 84 more likely to immediately enroll in Postsecondary Education. Our policy goals is to simplify the form, improve awareness and expand eligibility, encouraging enrollment and lowering errors for applicants. The 2019 future act in fafsas implication act brought us comprehensive reform widely talked about as a simplified fafsa. According to the department of education, 600,000 more students will become eligible for pell grants in 2025. We began the school year with high hopes for this better fafsa. Instead, students and families and the advisers and counselors who support them have experienced fafsa technical malfunctions, a botched i. D. Account creation system that has many students from mixed status families still unable to contribute parent information to the form. A call center with hour long waits, dropped calls due to volumes and incorrect information. And a painfully slow rampup of applicant data transfers to waiting Financial Aid offices who now rewait reprocessing due to formula errors. Open issues remain including no functionality for 20 of the students who need to make corrections, some resulting from known issues. An unknown number of paper forms still have no time line for processing. No data has been shared on the share of the renewal forms. The delayed processing and reprocessing of applications means most High School Seniors have yet to receive an aid offer and are being asked to commit by may 1. Our greatest fear is they will decide they cant. Students have done all the right things, working hard for 12 years and now theyre getting all the steps in their senior year in high school to continue to college but have no idea how or if they can afford those next steps on their postsecondary path p. The data portends a decline in College Enrollment this fall for the last of 2024 unless something changes very quickly. 20 fewer fafsas have been processed sent the same date last year. More than one million more fafsa submissions are needed from High School Seniors to match last years submission rates which we had hoped to exceed this year. Submission gaps are exacerbated in high schools serving large ims of students from low communities and high minority enrollment. N. C. M. Projects we can reach the june 30 milestone from 100,000 to 700,000 incompletions this year and these numbers must serve as an Early Warning sign. The last time we saw such dramatically low numbers watts in the height of the pandemic that notably brought on a 6. 8 drop in immediate College Enrollment for the class of 2020 with significant decreases for black, latino, and native american students. Postsecondary enrollment still has not fully recovered. Its still possible to inject momentum into this cycle. Despite the challenges, tireless fierce Student Advocates and the students and families they support have rolled the proverbial rock up the hill. Despite persistent setbacks they remain committed to our students and the promise of a better fafsa. We applaud and appreciate states who adopted universal fafsa completions. Were grateful to the state aid programs and institutions that have delayed their enrollment dates and held back aid for those impacted by reprocessing. And weve joined the efforts by quickly standing up and raising an additional 1 million for an additional fafsa campaign. The Education Department fafsa college support tragedy gets needed help to underresourced institutions, many of whom enroll our students. We urge the Biden Administration to allow flexible use for those funds for Community Based organizations, School Districts and state agencies to continue the work. We also appreciate next weeks fafsa week of action in which the department is raising awareness and holding completion events. We remain committed to working with you for our students. The equity stakes here are monumental as is the impact on postsecondary enrollment. Id be happy to answer questions here or in individual followup. Thank you again for this opportunity. Mr. Owens thank you, ms. Cook, i appreciate that. Lastly, id like to recognize ms. Stillman. Ms. Stillman thank you to members of the community, im rachel feldman, the vice provost of enrollment at the university of chapel hill and also a member of fafsa simplification working group. Thats a handful. At carolina were the nations oldest and First Public University with a mission to educate the leaders of tomorrow from every corner of our state and beyond. We are proud to be both need blinded emissions and meet the full demonstrated financial need of every undergraduate. We provide an excellent education at an affordable price for all but to do that we rely not only on the generosity of our state and donors but especially on federal student aid and we cannot fulfill that promise without a working fafsa. In september of 2020 with great optimism i testified before the Senate Health committee in favor of fafsa simplification and excited about the possibilities of the future. Unfortunately, the rollout of better fafsa has been disappointing. My colleagues and i feel discouraged, frustrated, but most of all worried about the impact this will have on students ability to attend college and achieve economic and social mobility. Today im going to focus on what its like on the ground. My colleagues have talked about how rocky the fafsa launch was when it came three months late. Meanwhile, we at schools were not receiving any data from the submitted forms and struggled to help families and students complete. The peer advisers in our Carolina College advising corps who tried to hold their usual fafsa completion events for students in underresourced high schools were frustrated and often stymied by federal systems that were down or not functioning as expected. Today six months behind our regular schedule, we received only about 60 of the records we normally would at this time of year. The files we received friday from the department telling us how many of our files needed reprocessing constituted 48 of the records we can match. And another 20 are rejected because of lack of signature or other known issues. We feel like were flying blind without a clear path and we have yet to release a single official aid offer despite having released our admissions decision. Policy changes are also causing whiplash. More than once the departments issued guidance only to have it reversed or revised within days. Weve done, undone and redone work more times this year than i can count. Our Financial Aid professionals and schools feel like the rug keeps getting yanked out from under them. And if they feel like that, imagine how our first generation families and students feel also will frustrating is how tone deaf communication from schools have been. Secretary cardona wrote a letter to School President s that in part replied schools were not ready and responsible for the delay in aid offers. At that exactly time colleagues were reporting hold times of over three hours with the department to try to get help or being put on a priority callback list only to wait weeks for a response. And the electronic announcements we were receiving reallying on for guidance read more like press releases. As one of my colleagues said, enough with the sun shine and rainbows, Higher Education is too important to be a political football. I know each of you are here serving because you care about our students, their families and future. You dont want double talk or sales pitches any more than we do. What we all need is Straight Talk and Timely Solutions that give students money to go to college. Continuing delays hurt our most vulnerable students and families the most. Millions of students rely on the support they receive from Guidance Counselors or outreach programs in order to not just complete the fafsa but make crucial College Decisions. As time marchs on, those students are going to graduate and not have those resources. We cannot leave behind talented minds simply because they rely on Financial Aid to go to college. We in the field are exhausted. We know there are many dedicated career staff at ed working long hours trying to fix the issues and theyre frustrated, exhausted, and frankly, probably embarrassed at this point. Were already worrying about next year, will there be more delays . Will we leave more young people behind . Will i be able to enroll the students so key to my mission . Were facing a crisis of enrollment and of trust. But ill conclue the test with hope. Once we solve the problem with the fafsa, were in for a better world and Financial Aid being a lifeline for millions of students, we have to make this work. Schools in the Outreach Community stand ready to do all we can to make things better and help students. We appreciate your help making sure everyone can benefit from the promise of fafsas simplification. Thank so you much for your attention and im happy to answer any questions you may have. Mr. Owens thank you so much, ms. Feldman, i appreciate that. By Committee Rule 9, well begin questioning witnesses on the fiveminute rule and ill begin the process. The departments fafsa delays and errors are not victimless crimes. At the end of the day, students, families and states and institutions are anxious and frustrated because the department failed to do the job. Mr. Draeger, in your testimony you give several examples of several departments sweeping fafsa problems under the rug. Why did the department continue to downplay the problems of fafsa the last three years though advocates and groups were sounding the alarm. This started back, as i read your comments, back in 2021. Its now 2024. Youve been sounding the alarm for quite a while. What is the reason for that response . Mr. Draeger i wish i knew the answers to some of the reasons the department swept or felt like they couldnt be forthcoming with the fafsa issues. We started raising them early when they were missing deadlines. Some of the early misses didnt seem like the biggest deal at the time because they were just missing a few deadlines or werent coming out with roadmaps we expected them to come out with. I think, mr. Owens, thats a completely appropriate question for this committee to be asking of the department of education in its oversight function and not really free in political points but to understand so we dont repeat these mistakes in the future, its that critical. I can tell you some of the ramifications, though, which is a loss of confidence by institutional Financial Aid offices, they dont trust necessarily the data they have is completely accurate, that there wont be more data issues in the future, paralysis. We just did a poll over the last two days and we have a good number of institutions who are unsure whether they will be able to go out and send aid offers before may 1, which is the traditional date by which schools ask students to decide where theyll be attending. A lot of schools have already pushed that date back by now. Confusion in the aid office that lead to confusion among students and families, and fear of wrongdoing by auditors and Program Reviews that with all this rapid change in policy guidance that schools will be left on the hook left to explain to creditors, program reviewers and auditors and ultimately led to this crisis of credibility with the department of ed. Mr. Owens mr. Kantrowitz, the purpose or results of this crazy rollout that was had . Mr. Kantrowitz the overly sunny responses by the department werent really acknowledging the problems that they were experiencing. They were having it was as though this was to spin a disaster as though it was something successful. Like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. It was inconceivable why they wouldnt come out and just say the truth that things were problematic. Even yesterday, they issued an electronic announcement where 20 of fafsas that need to be reprocessed because of i. R. S. Data transfer errors, they said that they will start reprocessing them by may 1, that theyre going to start, not when theyre going to finish and by may 1 probably means theyre going to issue it on may 1 or maybe the day before. And so this may 1 National Candidates apply date or decision day, it cant possibly be on may 1. And given that it takes colleges at least two weeks to generate Financial Aid offers, it probably means may 15 is out as well. Ive been recommending to colleges that they delay until june 1. And i worry, will we have the fafsa completed, updated by the fall . Mr. Owens thank you. Id like to ms. Feldman, what kind of students have been hurt most by the mismanagement of the department and who stands to lose the most in this process . Ms. Feldman clearly students who really need to know whether they can afford school or not, so the the lowest income students are hurt the most. And those that are not accepted to the very tiny number of elite universities that have enough money to make offers without federal aid. I worry most, honestly, about a student in, say, Rural North Carolina who heard all their life that college is out of their reach, theyve worked hard for 12 years, but all the voices around them are saying they cant afford it, and we cant get them the document that proves they can, and we lose out on that talent. Mr. Owens thank you. Thank so you much. Id now like to recognize ms. Jaypal for her questioning. Ms. Jaypal fafsa helps those reach success and millions complete the fafsa to make it possible to pursue Higher Education, whether its college or trade schools. But these are unacceptable issues that weve seen with the redesign and the rollout of processing fafsa this year. And thats made it very difficult for students to know whether they can afford school. Similarly, colleges have not been able to communicate how much student award packages are, making it harder for students to choose where to go. These issues exacerbate a trend i see in my home state of washington where too many students who may be eligible for Financial Aid are not even submitting their fafsa. My state is ranked 47 out of 50 for fafsa completions. Ms. Cook, the department of education must continue to mitigate these fafsa delays im talking about. At the same Time Congress needs to examine the barriers that prevent eligible families from receiving student aid. 38 of low income students receive the pell grant which suggests some eligible students dont finish their fafsa. Clearly, this moment with fafsa is unlike previous years. What issues have families raised in the past that indicate why they skip applying altogether . Ms. Cook thank you for the question. Ms. Jaypal if you could pull that closer to you, that would be great. Ms. Cook what brought us here today are the issues you ask about with fafsa. It was a burdensome form, too complicated, asked many questions that many families had already answered through i. R. S. Tax data, used confusing terms that are not everyday terms such as i. R. A. Pension rollovers, not unfamiliar to students and really prevented a burden and barrier to many students, as you point out. On top of that, many Students Experienced a back end auditlike process called verification that asked students to confirm the information they submitted and all these things brought us to the simplified fafsa, the better fafsa, in the hopes that things like the i. R. S. Data transfer will allow students to cleanly move over their information theyve already provided to the i. R. S. In taxes for use for income and thats verified data that wont be questioned again on the back end. So i hope we are meeting a lot of those challenges that we identified if this new format. Ms. Jaypal we certainly heard excessive requirements block emeligible students by making the process altogether too complex to receive aid, and failing to resolve these issues as all of our witnesses laid out, including students choosing to skip Postsecondary Education or those who take on more student debt when they dont need to. Im proud of my state to enroll students in tuition free opportunities by using the students eligibility for public assistance programs like snap, my state will help children realize they can attend College Tuition free as early as the 10th grade. Its life changing. What do programs like snap or w. I. C. Have in common that can heppellageible families get student aid without a complex application . Ms. Cook well, first, thank you for elevating the issues of Food Insecurity which continues to challenge our students in accessing college and particularly in completing college. Washington was wise to coordinate benefit eligibility to help students gather all the resources they need to support them in their Higher Education. I would also point out that state aid agencies and institutions of Higher Education now have the ability to reach out to students using fafsa data to flag potential eligibility so they can coordinate all those benefitss. Ms. Jaypal the fafsa delays continue to demonstrate the problems in someones life when fafsa is too complicated and Washington State ineligibility is a way to work around this and the federal government should continue to make it easy for eligible students to receive aid. What do you think we should do to promote early eligibility awareness and minimize barriers to help students receive the assistance theyre eligible for. Ms. Cook early awareness is key to help students continue the aspirations that many forms in middle school and Elementary School and continue through high school. Messaging eligibility particularly around federal student aid is key. Were excited theres a pell lookup table that allows us to talk to a student in those early years and really demonstrate what the current availability is for aid so that students see this that it is possible and know funding it there to support postsecondary. Ms. Jaypal thank so you much p. I yield back. Mr. Owens id like to recognize my friend from pennsylvania, mr. Mr. Thompson thanks very much. This time of year is typically a celebratory one for High School Seniors and others around the country as they gain acceptance letters and postsecondary programs look ahead with excitement for their future education and pathway to careers. Unfortunately this year the Biden Administration has injected anxiety, frustration, and uncertainty out of this process for millions of families across this great nation. While i remain deeply disappointed in the department of education in their consistent failure to prepare for what was supposed to be a simplified fafsa process, we must prevent these issues from happening again and ensure students enrolling in the upcoming year have the resources. While weve heard about issues with students being able to fill out or complete fafsa due to the departments failure, one thing this struck me in your written testimony is weve not heard much about the actual errors in the system is producing leading to things like incorrect pell grant awards. As you pointed out, 20 of students that have somehow been able to fill out the fafsa have had their applications rejected due to errors that the Department Said it cannot solve. Now, this is in addition to the 20 of applications that the department has already admitted were processed incorrectly. Can you share more about the root cause of these errors and whats causing them and what the department could have done to prevent them . Mr. Draeger just to be clear, these are averages. So youll see different numbers at different schools and some of these numbers might be higher at individual schools. 20 of the errors are pulling over wrong Data Elements from the i. R. S. So those are applications that will have to be reprocessed. And those reprocessing will be on different time lines. So institutions are doing a bunch of different things. Some are getting aid offers out only only the applications they know are correct. Some schools are waiting for the reprocessing. Some schools are deciding what to do and depends on every institution. What it ultimately means are delays for students. On top of the 20 are an additional 20 where the form, the applicant data going to the school is not generating enough information for them to do anything. They dont have the numbers to calculate a Financial Aid offer. And that is called a rejected icer and might be because the student didnt sign the application or the parent didnt sign the application, they didnt sign an authorization to bring over i. R. S. Data. It might be because they incorrectly signaled they only wanted loans. There might be a host of reasons. In those instances, the student or the parent needs to go in and make a correction. The functionality to make corrections has not been brought online. Normally that functionality exists out of the gate. But neither a student nor an institution can go in and make a correction as of this morning. So those 40 are basically, as of today at least, dead in the water until the Department Takes further action. Mr. Thompson my followup question, youve answered that. In the frustration that taxpayers are having with the i. R. S. It could be a contributing factor, the inefficiency of that agency in order to process those tax returns. A lot of frustrations were hearing from taxpayers right now as well in addition to students and parents. As chairman of the house agriculture committee, i also have to express my profound concern for farm families across the country have not been able to process proper aid as result of fafsa formula in the fact that it counts their assets against them. These are not liquid assets. I dont know what part of the farm they expect them to sell and still be in farming at the end of the day. But farming is an asset rich, cash poor industry and these families do not have their assets that are necessary to do their jobs and feed our nation counted against emwhen determining eligibility for federal Financial Aid. I think at this point ill try here. Ms. Feldman, you and your colleagues have encountered have you encountered any students whose aid has been eliminated because of this new policy . Ms. Feldman thank you. Unfortunately, because of the lack of data or the errors in the fafsa this year, we havent been able to do any analysis yet to see how the formula change is impacting our families. Mr. Thompson my time is about to expire but i have to say thank you. I was put on my road to my masters degree with master hours at the university of North Carolina chapel hill. Great education and great pig pickins down there. Thank you very much. I yield. Mr. Owens id like to recognize Ranking Member ms. Wilson. Ms. Wilson thank you. Despite efforts to simplify the fafsa process, low income first generation students and families still are facing challenges. This raises concerns about equitable access to federal Financial Aid. Ms. Cook, based on a fast book tracker, what do fafsa submission rates look like in historically lowincome communities right now . Ms. Cook thank you. As i mentioned, about 30 fewer fafsas have been submitted this year by High School Seniors compared to last year. However, those numbers are exacerbated in lowincome communities which lag 7 age points behind their better resource peers and in schools with high minority enrollments which lag 6 age points behind and already behind 30 . Ms. Wilson can you share some of the specific challenges faced by lowincome and first generation students in completing the form . How do these challenges impact their access to federal Financial Aid . Ms. Cook sure. Many students are challenged by a lack of knowledge about federal student aid. The idea that the federal government will provide resources such as pell grants and subsidized loans. We work very hard to spread awareness about those. The second piece is around supports. Maybe many underresourced schools dont have Proper High School counselor ratios to support students or the ability to call on Community Based partners to do that. So their awareness and support issues for sure and previously the complexity of the form and the ability to collect all the information to complete it certainly presented a challenge we hope this year bill turn the tide on. Ms. Wilson ok. Im very concerned about the potential longterm impacts of the issue on College Enrollment, particularly for lowincome students and students of color. Ive heard many stories where Students Experience issues with the form and have lost confidence in the Financial Aid process, and im worried instead of seeking help, these students will instead opt out of college entirely. Are you concerned about enrollments trends as a result of the delays in fafsa . Ms. Cook we absolutely share your concerns. Weve heard from many students that they have admission offers but no aid offers to communicate that they have an ability to afford and pay for college. Ms. Wilson how can we address this psychological response to the issue and signal to students that they belong in the Higher Education system. What can we do . Ms. Cook absolutely. The first thing we need to do is get the system pack on track and get the aid offers flowing to students so they have the application and tell students there are ways to afford college with pell grants and subsidized loans and state institutional aid. The second is all of the people, the village of people, the School Counselors, the access advisers, Financial Aid personnel, admission personnel who continue to message to students that they belong and we can help them make this happen. Ms. Wilson im extremely concerned but do have confidence things will get better. Any time something is new any time you roll out with the department of education, i am sure youre working on these folks and next year it will be different but im extremely concerned about the class of 2024. Do you feel like the department has owned mistakes or taken responsibility and do you believe any employees of the department of education, political or otherwise, should lose their jobs because of the botched rollout . Mr. Draeger the department has certainly acknowledged that these have been difficult and challenging times. But i have yet to hear any sort of apologies from the department of education and not even to schools but to students and families. And i admit maybe i missed them but we are months, six months delayed where the fafsa should have been released to students and families. There are a lot of glitches and challenges and there have been entire swaths of students who have not been able to complete it. Weve not seen that. I think this committee bipartisanshiply has the responsibility to explore whether there should be ramifications felt as it relates to those sort of questions, mr. Grothman. I would add two points, if was a Financial Aid partner that delayed Financial Aid up to six months, the professional price that would be paid for that would be pretty steep. The second point i would raise is that federal student aid is one of only three performance based organizations within the federal government. It operates very uniquely in the federal government. That means its given certain flexibilities that dont exist elsewhere within federal agencies in terms of hiring, h. R. Practices and contracting. With those flexibilities should come accountability that congress should hold them to account for. If its ok with the committee, we certainly can submit some of nasfas accountability on reform. Mr. Grothman ms. Feldman, when would your university send out aid officers normally and because of delays, when will offers be sent out this year . Ms. Feldman normally we sent out aid offers with offers of admission and would have been towards the end of january for our Early Admission applicants and towards the end of march for our regular. We have yet to be able to send out a single aid offer because of the poor quality of the data and the late receipt of the icers. We are hopeful weve found some workarounds because we are one of those schools that collect the c. F. S. Profile form that will allow us to produce aid offers in a couple weeks. However, without that, im not sure i would have an answer for you today. Mr. Grothman you have no idea when theyll be coming out this year . Ms. Feldman i hope by the first week of may well have something out there. Im hoping. Mr. Grothman ive been contacted by some professionals in wisconsin. Obviously we have a the love colleges like everybody else. And theyre losing faith in the department. What do you think the department of education has to do to restore trust with the college and Financial Aid officers . Ms. Feldman i understand that lack of faith when the information and guidance keeps changing just when we think were going to get information, theres another delay. I think what we really need from the department is for them to own the problems they have which they started doing and just tell us straight, whats going to work and whats not going to work. Anything about next year we should know now . Its sort of hard to believe it all will be solved and on time for next year. Lets start planning for that right now and be good partners and try to help each other solve all the problems. Mr. Grothman ill give you one question thats a little off the point and see if you can answer it for me. I visited one of our Financial Aid offices and to my surprise, they viewed loans as a carrot to get more people in the school. Its clear they felt you would take out a loan of this size, think of how much fun you would have . Do you find any of this attitude anywhere when you get around and are you doing what you can to make sure that attitude doesnt get out among your universities . Mr. Draeger speaking to the Financial Aid offices we represent on the contrary, the aid people would like to limit lending for a swath of students, something wed love to work with you on, mr. Grothman. Mr. Grothman ok. Thank you very much. Mr. Owens id like to recognize ms. One mythy for questioning. Recognize ms. Bonamici. Ms. Bonamici ive been on this committee for years and i dont recall at the time having conversations about the Technology Part of it and what a massive change, and i think it was you, mr. Krakowitz that mentioned cobalt and i dont know what it would take to do that with the technology and i spent a long time having the department of education work with treasury to automatically transmit income payments. And i was thinking why is this complicated because it should be easier than it looks at first glance. But the bipartisan simplification act was necessary and overdue. I think theres agreement on that point. It helps students and families better access Financial Aid and affordable Higher Education. As someone who put myself through community college, law school, its been a long time since i filled out a fafsa form but i know it was needed to be updated. We sit here today with i think no question that mistakes were made and i am especially concerned about underserved communities, mixed status families, they think they say it is an additional burden to complete the application and i know someone brought up the lack of assistance from High School Counselors who are already overburdened with all the other issues they are dealing with. What happens when school is over and students do not have access, i still have some hope that this application cycle, i hope we can get it solved and move to a Better Future for students with the understanding that the intent of the simplification bill was to simplify it, not make a more complicated fafsa. The department of education announced the Fafsa College Support Strategy designed to provide Additional Resources to colleges as they go through this process. So how is that College Support Strategy working . Is it supporting colleges and universities through the process and how can the department continue to build on these efforts in the coming months not just to support colleges and universities but also students and families . Thank you for that question. We were excited to hear about the College Support Strategy and that it would help support the institutions, many of which are under resourced and many of which enroll our students. How does the fafsa tracker help states and schools and other stakeholders support f uh completion and and what can we glean from the current completion levels that i know the current data concerns you as you mentioned and others here at here . Yes. The tracker we hope, we often say in the office that data as a flashlight so we hope that the fafsa tracker will help district leaders, superintendents, and High School Principals and School Counselors and Access Advisors to understand where the outreach is needed the most and how we target the students to encourage fafsa completion. Indiana has seen a 20 drop in fafsa submissions. That could mean 20 fewer students getting Financial Aid. What is that the best way for congress to hold the Administration Accountable for putting people in my state in a situation like that . The responsibility does rest with congress. Fsa is one of three performancebased organizations. It has additional flexibility i think this body should be looking at bipartisan only, including hr hiring practices and contracting and you are off to a good start. You have asked the Government Accountability office to begin an investigation of what has gone on with the fast law i think once that fafsa and i think once that report comes in it would be good if several of the questions weve already started here were asked directly of the department of education. I agree with my colleagues. I want to reiterate we know that the career staff at the department of ed are not there for fame and glory. They are people working hard every day. And when something goes wrong, it is leadership you look to for accountability. Does it appear the administration is embarrassed by this . It affects so many people. I think we have definitely seen an uptick from the administration in putting more resources to this in the last several months, even the last 24 hours, since the hearing was announced. Many things i put in my written testimony about the issues that have plagued the fafsa rollout from the Financial Aid office perspective, we have seen changes in the last couple months and last 24 hours. So they have thrown more resources at it, conferences, communicating more frequently, and thankfully at least in the last 24 hours they have been more direct in operational guidance instead of pumping it up with fluff and pr. What i would say is a lot of it feels like trying to close the barn doors after the horses have left the stable. I think it will take additional oversight from bipartisanly committee to make sure we see it through if we will salvage this year. A new story out this week about the Biden Administration may try to make another enron around the Supreme Court to erase Student Loan Debt, is there a connection here . Between the botched rollout and erasing Student Loan Debt . Mr. Kantrowitz i think it has been perhaps a distraction whereas the primary purpose of federal student a is the use student Financial Aid and the fafsa. They are the breadandbutter issues. And where they have been focusing on trying to bypass the Supreme Court ruling through the regulatory process, i do not know how many of the staff overlap, but it certainly means that they cannot have all hands on deck focusing on fafsa when some of them are focused on other aspects of the federal student a responsibility. So you think it is more of a distraction means botching an important rollout of the fafsa forms when they should have been focused on the fafsa forms to begin with . Congress offered to increase funding if they did not pursue student loan forgiveness. They turned that down. So at least in that regard they did not get the funding they needed because they were focused on the student loan forgiveness peace. Obviously erasing Student Loan Debt is a political move, a posture leading into an election , and you are suggesting that the focus paid there might have been more focused to begin with and doing their job to begin with, rolling out the fafsa forms and helping people like me. I yield back. Thank you to our witnesses for being with us today. I have read your testimony. It is obvious that the launch of this years fafsa has not gone as intended and now it is vital to do everything in our power to support and provide the flexibility so vitally necessary for our institutions and students to be shielded from any negative impact this might have had on their daily lives and also operations. The stakes cannot be higher for many of our collegeage young people across the country. I just spent time with some College Students this morning. A sorority group i was with. As may quickly approaches, sodas College Decision day. Federal Financial Aid is a vital part of College Affordability for many families. It is a heartbreaking reality that some of our students might forgo college this year due to the lack of information about Financial Resources from the delay in the new fafsa program. Since the launch of this years delayed form, institutions have expressed concerns with their ability to comply with several title iv reporting requirements while simultaneously supporting student enrollment and processing Financial Aid in a timely manner. In response to these concerns the department of education has taken steps to reduce the burden on Financial Aid offices and institutions in general. Instead of having to provide all required reporting by july 31 of this year, institutions will be able to start reporting financial value transparency and gainful Employment Data through a new Department System starting in july, but will now have until october 1 to submit, giving them an additional two months. I appreciate the steps that have been taken by the department to provide relief to the Financial Aid teams tasked with providing this information and processing Financial Aid. However, one of the many things that has been unfortunately damaged by this implementation has been the level of trust that exists between institutions in the department. I know we cannot and must make a concerted effort to rebuild that trust and to ensure that every student receives their Financial Aid as quickly as they possibly can. And i know that we are working to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. The plan to collect financial value transparency in gainful Employment Data through a new system sounds similar to what institutions were being told in regard to this years fafsa and i know they are truly concerned about the departments ability to receive that data, as well as when the time comes. So i emphasize how important it is that we fix these issues as quickly as we possibly can and return to the strong level of trust that this department has really been known for. My question is, can you please provide context for why the reporting requirements pose unique capacity challenges for institutions this year, and how flexibility will help institutions focus on the enrollment and the Financial Aid process . Mr. Draeger yes. Thank you very much and thank you for raising this issue. These reporting requirements will shed light on Outcomes Data at institutions in a new way. But it also requires an enormous lift at every institution and coming up with all the data requirements that will be required to shed light on all of these program by Program Level outcomes for students. So for the schools, primarily through Financial Aid offices, right now they are six months behind that are being asked to do six months of work in six weeks. While we appreciate the delay from the department, they only offered a twomonth delay. So what we are really seeking from the department is something that is a little more commensurate with the delay in the fafsa. If you talk to any institution in your district or any district, we are asking for a little bit more of a delay that is commensurate with the delay in the fafsa processing. At the end of this, i think we will have something that is valuable for students, but we need just a little bit more time and it will hit hardest the under resourced schools that are serving the largest numbers of under resourced students, students who are most dependent on federal student a. Thank you so much. I am out of time. I appreciate it. I would like to recognize mr. Williams. Thank you, chairman. We sat here many months ago with representatives of the department of education asking them specifically about the fafsa rollout and the delays and their confidence that they will meet all of the deadlines that clearly none of them met. So even the oversight of Congress Seems to have no effect on the actual performance of the department of education. I find that pretty shocking. Listening to her testimony, there is so many different issues areas where seems to have failed. The functionality, timing, transparency with the department of education and communication. And the accuracy of the backend processing of the results. I would like to ask each one of you what grade you would give the department of education in their rollout of simplified stte fafsa . I would give an. I would give an f. F. C. Really . A number of parents would disagree with you as they worry about their childrens future. I guess i would give a d for disappointing. Cutting a very fine line. It is clear we have identified who has been harmed. It is the lowest income most vulnerable in our society, the ones that need and rely on the promise of education to be able to move forward in their lives. They are the ones in the dark literally tonight with the decisions about their future. I would like to skip ahead to what is the consequence and remedy. I will ask another question here. Could each of you tell me if you believe that this system will work flawlessly, the simplified fafsa system will work flawlessly this october . What is your confidence, high, medium, low . Medium. We have less than six months before the october 1 start date. I am concerned they will have to delay the start date. Mr. Draeger if you are asking me whether fafsa will be live and working in october and the schools will get that information in october, low. Ms. Cook medium. Ms. Feldman low. I have no confidence we will have any records beginning of october. I come out of the tech industry. It rolling out a business process automation or enterprise scale or web scale hosted application which is what this is, a lot of backend coordination with higher ups or other departments, whatever the apis are you are making calls from, it is not a trivial task to roll this out. But this rollout has been disastrous. And frankly inexcusable. I have heard some of my colleagues today say we are going to make sure nothing like this happens again. And i just laugh out loud, because our government makes these kinds of promises to deliver these kinds of solutions. We give them billions of dollars to do this. And they fail again and again. And there is no accountability. They ignore congress. They ignore the will of the people. I think 10. 8 million families need to shout out their grievance against the department of education and their failure to deliver on the promise of the Financial Aid. As my colleagues have pointed out, kids and parents spend years planning and dreaming and preparing for the opportunities, part of which, particularly with the high cost of education, is credited is predicated on that is kind of program. Our government fails to deliver over and over and over again and there certainly will be accountability. Any suggestions on who we need to have in front of this committee and the questions we need to ask . The operational staff, chief operating officer, senior operator before the committee to answer questions about the federal student aid handling of fafsa. Ok. Any last comments . I yield back. Mr. Owens i would like to now recognize ms. Leger fernandez from new mexico. Thank you, mr. Chairman, thank you for joining us today. I cannot tell you how many texts i have received, which i know everyone on the panel has, from friends, constituents just screaming at how difficult it is for them to make a decision. As i plan to go to graduations in may, give commencement addresses, celebrate, people do not know what they are doing because they cannot make those decisions. What is really sad is that this is impacting those most who need it because fafsa is for those who need that financially. We need to know whether they are going to get there pell grant. They need to get the Financial Assistance. So exactly what college is supposed to be about, which is about open word mobility upward mobility, closing racial gaps, this disaster of what happened with fafsa is hurting the communities that i care deeply about. So we know that the delays are causing a drop in enrollment in new mexico where applications from High School Seniors are down 28 compared to last year. And in new mexico we rolled out an opportunity scholarship so youre going to have the tuition paid, but pell grants and the other scholarships that come are important because college is not just about tuition. Our rural districts, 40 decrease. Right now we need to be in the solution game. You acknowledge it is a mess. You know it is a problem. I do not want to just be in the blame game, i want to be in the solution game. We need to get the applications back up. Is kirk, how can we best support students and their families at this time to help them successfully navigate the fafsa delays, and are there Effective Community outreach resources we can share with our constituents . Absolutely. Thank you for sounding the alarm on the urgency of the situation. It is quite urgent. We have limited precious weeks left. I appreciate your solution orientation and im happy to share some of those. This is a very oneonone experience to complete a fafsa in many cases. The first recommendation is to support School Districts and communitybased organizations and is getting as much time as they can with students as soon as possible to help them complete the fafsa while we still have access to them during the school year. The second is that many states, including new mexico, have statewide fafsa completion campaigns. We need to increase and extend those beyond the typical time in march, the typical time of high school graduation. Summer supports will be necessary given the delays. We have a delayed opening by a finish line remains fixed, the semester begins in august and september for most students. So we need to use all the time we have available and make new time to support students with completion events and individual completion support. The idea of using the College Strategy funds to support districts to support funding for summer is important, and encouraging those institutions in your district to have flexibility on their deadlines for students who are still awaiting aid offers and deciding that they can attend. Another issue i am concerned about and i wrote a letter to the secretary of education in february about the problem fafsa was having with parents who have mixed immigration status. We wanted to see that fixed. The department of education responded that they fixed the submission error last month, but we know challenges persist for mixed status families. Ms. Cook, could you share experiences youve heard from mixed immigration status families about ongoing challenges in completing fafsa and how are you addressing the concerns . I need to remind everybody that immigrants contributed so much Economic Vitality to the United States economy, and we need to make sure that we are able to honor those contributions by ensuring that children who are eligible are able to access the Education Resources they deserve. Ms. Cook thank you for that. The ability of eligible dependent students who have parents without Social Security numbers to use the fafsa form was one of the top promising new pieces coming with the fafsa this year. It also has been the top frustration communicated by our members who serve students, many of whom are eligible dependent students having parents without a Social Security number. I see that my time has expired. Ms. Cook i will continue this in writing. We would love to have that because this is something people care about in my district and across the country. Thank you very much. Is there any evidence fafsa implementation or successful implementation has been a priority of the Biden Administration . Mr. Draeger when the Biden Administration came in they asked and met with us about our priorities and we flagged fafsa implementation. They were receptive to that. But i think the evidence speaks for itself that they did not take it seriously enough. In that same time they have tried to tackle a lot of things. Debt forgiveness, next generation loans servicing, returned to repayment, operation fresh start for defaulted borrowers. I am not casting dispersions on what administrations come in and feel they have mandates from the electorate. Fafsa supported several of their initiatives. I will point out this was a bipartisan mandate from congress and the fact speak for themselves of where we are today. If everything is a priority, any ceo will tell you, you do not have a strategic roadmap. You do not have a strategic priority. Unfortunately we are where we are today because this did not rise to the top. You gave these suggestions to them three years ago when the Biden Administration started so they have had the benefit of this for all three years they have been there and your point is if everything is a priority nothing is a priority and they havent made anything a priority and what they have been obsessed with and what they have focused on as we know is the student loan transfer scheme. This administration has relentlessly focused on what they call student loan forgiveness and you have to wonder are they just as honest or just incompetent . Do they think money is magic in it just disappears when you forget of it and you wonder why they wouldnt do the same with auto loans or credit card loans or what have you because people dont have to make the payments and its not really fair that some people have Mortgage Loans but they bought homes and some people dont have Mortgage Loans or maybe they paid off their homes but in this case weve delegitimized the whole process and just in the last six months since october when fafsa was supposed to be done here is what the administration has prioritized. A transfer of money and student loan to taxpayer, november, announcing millions of borrowers are involved in a safe plan that allows millions to have a zero monthly payment, december, they transfer billions in of student debt to taxpayers, february, they transfer 1. 2 billion in Student Loan Debt to taxpayers, march they transfer 5. 8 billion in Student Loan Debt to the taxpayers are not to be outdone or to stop pursuing this this week april 8 the Administration Announces new plans to transfer student debt more Student Loan Debt to the american taxpayer i suppose that is coincidental to the election that is forthcoming i am sure it is not a vote buying scheme. What student population is most negatively impacted, so what student population most negatively impacted by fafsa delays . When its not working correctly there is delays for parents and students who does it impact most negatively . Those who need the money to go to college. And those with the least experience with college going. First generation students, children of immigrants, populations that might have been told all their life that college was not for them. They have worked very hard and now they do not know whether they can afford it. So it wouldnt impact as much those families whove have maybe had several kids go through college and they have done fafsa and they know the process but the first time ones in addition to the lower income folks and does the delayed fafsa rollout help Lower College costs for families, does it do anything to lower cost . It does not help lower cost. It just makes the cost less clear. There is no information to make a decision with. In the bigger longer term view of this does a student loan transfer scheme actually reduce College Costs do you believe . Are you asking me if forgiving peoples loans . Yeah what does it do overall to college because more probably , more generally if that happens do you say you dont have to pay Student Loans what happens to college cost overall . For those who dont have to pay their loans it just got cheaper. For every one dollar increase in loan subsidies Higher Educations capture is . 60 on the dollar through increased tuition. If you forgive Student Loans dr. Adams . Thank you all for being here. Certainly we want to welcome North Carolina in the house as well. Let me just say i agree with my colleagues that we have a situation here that right now we need to try to fix. I have had 40 years on the College Campus as a professor and administrator and i do understand what students need, particularly relating to Financial Aid, as i worked with many students who really were first generation, they needed that support and still do. I have a question about the designated entities from his cloak. We have heard more concerns about stakeholders and their inability to access student federal Tax Information to support the enrollment and completion. So we are looking at interpretation of both the fafsa simplification act on the future act, a bill i sponsored. Programs and entities like gear up and state agencies are unable to access the data. Can you share more information about the designated issues designated entity issue and how it impacts the support various educational stakeholders can provide students . I would be happy to. As you pointed out the designated entities are groups like treo, gear up, and nonprofits with established relationships with students. The ability to know the fafsa completion status on a student level. So that helps me know that kim has not completed her fafsa and i should go reach out to her rather than reaching out broadly , it allows targeted outreach to support students through successful completion. We struggled with this for quite some time, the new definitions of federal Tax Information put into question some ability to share that information. We learned friday that designated entities trio, it gear up and nonprofits with established relationships with students will have access to data after each state Agency Updates their agreement with the department. Ok. Are there additional components of the issue that congress or the department of ed need to consider for either this years fafsa process or 20252026 . Yes. Clearly the ability to share this data will be critical to targeted outreach. There are still open questions about the ability to share nonfederal Tax Information across campus, perhaps with other campus supports, and to coordinate eligibility so we look forward to more on that. Thank you very much. Mr. Draeger, can you share some of the ongoing challenges faced by under resourced institutions, particularly their ability to support students in navigating the Financial Aid process . Mr. Draeger one of the strengths of the u. S. Higher Education System is we have so many different types of schools serving so many different types of students. Under resourced institutions serve a disproportionate number of pell eligible students. They generally have fewer staff, fewer resources, fewer systems expertise and now with this rollout the department of education is asking the schools to do a lot of manual work. They have to sort through a lot of files manually to determine which files and records are accurate and which are not. That leaves under resourced institutions at a disadvantage relative to their peers. The schools cannot get out the eight offers as quickly aid offers as quickly. If the fafsa challenges continue what are some longterm impacts on student enrollment . I worry that we will lose the lowest income high talent students, they will choose not to enroll in college. That will be bad for the entire economic and social mobility of our state. Worry we will not be able to protect our class and provide the right services to the students who show up. The longer we delay, we also delay our connecting of students to campus services, orientation, fighting an advisor, and similar so we are not setting the students who show up up for success. I could be a witness today at one of these hearings because i have two children who are graduating seniors in high school and i am going through the fafsa process like many other parents across the nation and many of us recognize our students cannot move through the Financial Aid process until the fafsa process is completed. In fact many colleges will not let you move through the College Scholarship process until fafsa is completed. I am looking at my emails right now and i will laugh about some of them in a second because the first i got was from january 7 that has my daughters name and says cannot be eligible for federal student a without your input. To help them complete the fafsa form online. For the next month, i got online and tried to fill up my portion, which is just to verify my income, over and over again several times per week for a month and then i finally gave up. February 4 i submitted an inquiry, i got a case number back that day and said i cannot get through because you keep give me an error message that says it is your fault on your end and my daughter needs me to process this so she can apply for federal student and when she goes to college. No response. Except to say thank you for your inquiry, heres your case number. Two months later, last week, i got an email that says we have close your case. In the interim, it finally worked, after many works many weeks of attempts it finally worked and then i get an email saying we have close your case and also an email from last thursday that says dear nathaniel, thank you for contacting federal student a. We would love to hear your thoughts about your experience. I am pretty sure they will get the thoughts on my experience today for you guys. It was not good. And it is not just me. Millions in the country are going through the same process and having the same frustrations and their kids are just looking for an opportunity for Higher Education. It is all they want. I am hearing from my institutions of Higher Learning in east texas. Here is what they told me. One third of the applications are coming in this year compared to years past. Less students are moving through the process. That means less year next year we will have less students enrolled. The department of education has effectively stopped sending them fafsa update as of march 22. They say they have no visibility on the returning students or the new students on who or has not effectively done that so they can reach out and contact the students that have applied or are returning to say what can we do to help you to get them through the process as well. Heres the quote i found really interesting from one of the institutions of Higher Learning in my district. The 2024 2025 fafsa rollout has presented a greater threat to Higher Education than covid four years ago. The challenges the students are facing, we need the Financial Aid to get out of their station in life and they cant because our government has failed them. I know you all agree with that and i appreciate your testimony but i wanted to give you my two cents as a parent going through the process. Based on where things currently stand, how behind is the Development Cycle for that 2526 fafsa when compared to a typical year . In a normal year, to put typically in for worried the department of education publishes a pdf version of fafsa for the upcoming year. Last year it was a month late. March 23 instead of forward 24 the year before. We are past march and we still do not have a draft of the new fafsa. We have six months. Another concern is that the financially formula has annual inflationary adjustments and they have not done the adjustments i offered to provide them for the tables and documentation to show how i calculated them. I was told it was not as simple as swapping out numbers. That suggests to me it was not implemented in a module modular fashion. It is to doing that annual update will be as difficult as in previous years. They could still get it done by october 1 but i see no signs they are working on it, probably because they are still working on getting this years fafsa done. So i lack confidence that they will are not going to have to delay the october 1 day. Said why. Many who need this aid the most are opting not to attend College Next Year because of the uncertainty and that is a shame. I yield back. Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Your experience on the ground is incredibly important right now. I come from a state which looking at completed fafsa we are number one but it is obviously still in a credible of frustration in my district. I have a letter from mitchell college, a smaller Higher Education institution in new london, connecticut. They serve a really important population. A number of their students have disabilities, the percentage of pell grants for students is 61 and 95 use student aid. They were doing such great work the number of applications coming in this year went up 40 but the number of deposits at this point is down 67 and they do not have the financial strength to absorb that. President tracy appc obviously supports the intent of the fafsa reform but obviously it is really a crisis for that institution. I ask that be admitted into the record. No objection. In 2010 we passed the post 9 11 g. I. Bill which was probably one of the most popular important things we did particular the vehicle at a time when so many particularly at a time when so many were serving overseas. The rollout was a complete fiasco. The v. A. Opened up the portal, the system completely crashed, returning veterans who were about to matriculate still had not received their subsidy from the v. A. I remember the secretary at the time basically had all hands on deck in terms of manually writing checks so that veterans could make their payment to begin classes. It did not do the trick by itself, it took a number of years before the program was able to finally live up to the mission of serving people who every american supported in terms of giving them a much stronger benefit under the g. I. Bill. Ms. Cokie talked about we have a week of action coming up, a oneonone effort. Mr. Drager you described your own personal experience about helping students complete the fafsa. It is easier to complete for the most vulnerable student populations. Ideally if we had the boots on the ground to get out there and talk, can we make a dent in terms of that approach . Ms. Cook thank you for the question and urgency. We have a week of action aired we need weeks of action. We have limited time left, particularly with High School Seniors. We are not sure yet how renewal rates are going for current College Students. I would put a pin in potential concern for renewal rates as well. This time has to be well spent with the students we still have access to. At some of the northeast schools go later in the year, maybe through june. Others end in may. Urgency to spend time with the students while they are in school and ringing the bell on the fact that this cycle will be extended and we will have to look for ways to continue to support and access students through the summer. Mr. Draeger thank you for raising the institutional voices in your district. I started in 2010 and remember the rollout and it will take all of us rolling up our sleeves to get this work done. Financial aid offices are short staffed and have been since covid but im happy to report that they will put in the time. Theyll help students complete the fafsa, i think this year is salvageable, itll be painful, but we can get through it together. I have dealt with your membership in connecticut. These are great people. The department, particularly in terms of the Public Services loan forgiveness program, they were under court order to fix the program. Sometimes the administration is driven under jewish driven by external forces which the department does not have control over. I yield back. I recently heard from a constituent who reported her grandson had been accepted into penn state university. The young man is a star student, varsity basketball, student council, volunteers at church. It should be a happy occasion for him but he does not know at this point whether he will be able to attend because they need the Financial Aid. This is a difficult decision for them. They do not know when they will get answers. This is an extremely frustrating hearing to me, one of the most frustrating hearings i have been part of. It is not only that student. We have heard from hundreds across the district, thousands, maybe millions, across the country in a similar situation. I have also talked to at least three schools, smaller schools in my district, i talked with the president of them and they were not sure whether they could open on time. They are serving populations that need the Financial Aid. So at this point they should be fairly well locked in on how many students will attend their school. And they dont know. So this is affecting not only students, but the schools themselves. Its a disaster. Im amazed and disappointed that we are here. It is not a timing issue. This is what is most frustrating. Its not a timing issue, they have had three years to work on it. It doesnt seem to be a money issue. They have not asked for Additional Resources to roll this out. It just seems to be either bureaucratic incompetence or just not prioritized it. I know the issue of student loan , the student loan forgiveness programs, they keep trying to go around the Supreme Court thinking up new schemes. Whether that directly affected it, i dont know. Certainly they have paid more attention to that then they have the mandate to fix the fafsa process. Its almost a pattern now. We have been alarmed by the shoddy data testing, accounting practices, the department failed two audits in two years, the independent auditor had to issue a disclaimer that they could not trust basic calculations throughout their budget. You mentioned in your testimony that the department initially refused to update the Financial Aid formulas for inflation, which would have caused millions to get less Financial Aid. They couldnt even do basic testing before fafsa went live to ensure that the information was calculated correctly. It is affecting students everywhere. I get calls frequently to disband the department of education altogether. People in my district believe the federal government should not even have a department of education. This does not make arguing to keep the department of education any easier. Given the track record, what repercussions do you think this failure will have on public trust in the integrity of its programs and on stewardship of taxpayer dollars . Mr. Kantrowitz even in a normal year, 2 Million Students do not qualify for the pell grant because they did not apply who would have qualified. More than one million would have gotten the maximum pell grant. I think we are going to have it be far worse this year. That saves the government some money, but not for the right reason. The challenge is, we are seven months behind. If they started this process seven months earlier, we would not be in this situation. I am running out of time. Can we make the case that we need a department of education any longer . What is the alternative, would it be any better . Maybe we could get somebody to run the Financial Aid program better, i dont know. We can argue about the amount of Financial Aid, someone mention the impact on College Costs, maybe that is something we should talk about. But we should never be arguing about effectively administering the aid that has been made available. I am out of time and yield back. Mr. Scott from virginia. Thank you. When we started talking about the fafsa simplification act, it was chairman of the committee. Senator alexander from tennessee was chair of the senate committee. It was a major priority for him. You could simplify the form, cut the number of questions by two thirds, and to increase the number of students eligible and increase the amount of aid they could get. That was the goal. Regrettably, it has not worked out that way so far. No one in this committee on either side of the police happy with what is going on. Either side of the aisle is happy with what is going on. Mr. Draeger, you talk about a six month delay. It is a six month delay after a oneyear extension so it is worse. Ms. Cook, if the program had worked as expected, what would the historical how would the historical complexities of the fafsa form been addressed . Ms. Cook if working as expected we would anticipate we would have increased fafsa completion rates, which are important because they signal increased enrollment and completion. We would have a faster process where students and dependent students with contributing parents might experience fafsa that were record low completion times of 10 to 15 minutes rather than one hour. And as we talk about equity issue, we would have expanded pell Grant Eligibility to additional students for higher awards. Thank you. Ms. Feldman, you have been dealing with this. Do you have a date by which you expect this to be resolved . Ms. Feldman we have yet to be able to provide aid offers to our students, which we usually do with their admissions. We have tried hard to signal that they need to stick with us, it will be affordable, but it is hard to have them keep trusting us when we keep telling them to wait. Has the Department Given you a date . Ms. Feldman yesterday they published some dates that indicated that the remainder of the issues with the fafsa would be resolved sometime beginning early may. So about a month from now. We hope that at least for some students we will be able to get them offers sooner. If the system actually worked, what information would you get from fafsa and what would you do with that information . Ms. Feldman we would understand the student aid index that would tell us which of our aid programs they are eligible for. We have a loans free program for students below 200 of the poverty line. We announced a new program for essentially free tuition for everyone from North Carolina with income under 80,000. And we rely on pell grant grants and state grants that we would already we would also know those amounts so we could show students a picture of how affordable our institution could be and help me would enroll. We would know more about what our Fall Enrollment would be. We have had to extend deadlines and students are reasonably waiting until they have a real offer in hand to make a decision. If someone of low income especially eligible for snap or medicaid, why cannot you cant why cant you assume maximum pell grant and make an offer based on that . Ms. Feldman i have floated a few ideas to our campus of alternative ways we might make offers. When we give students Financial Aid, we are using tax money from North Carolina and i think we just do not want to be in a position where we risk the taxpayer dollars because we did not estimate correctly. So we have not moved forward yet with those plans. We might be in opposition if delays continue. Why is partially data not helpful . Ms. Feldman if you were going to court and had two thirds of your deposition done, there would be a third of the information missing. If you were doing your taxes and only filled out the first three lines with your name, the government would not know what you earned or owed. We do not have a full picture and in some cases we have no information because the match with the irs did not work and no student aid index was calculated or sent to us. Thank you. Thank you to the witnesses for testifying today. Im frustrated that we even need to have this hearing, seeing how the Biden Administration had three years to implement the fafsa simplification act. The updated free application for federal student a has been anything but simple. I am a parent of two College Students. One in college, one is a senior in high school. We experienced all the things that have been reported in trying to complete this. My home state of indiana is one of 13 states that mandates requirement of the fafsa for high school graduation. Not only are we adding to the stress of if the students can afford college, in some cases we are adding to the stress of the thought process and whether or not they will complete high school. Many states have waivers including mine but the question is, have parents been communicated to about the waiver process to decrease their stress level . The department of education also took a year and a half to even start working on this process and have instead dedicated nearly all their time to their illegal student loan forgiveness scheme. I have heard from school Guidance Counselors, parents, universities across the state about how farreaching and disastrous the rollout has been. 18 Million Students each year fill out the fafsa. Now we are seeing nearly 330 330 thousand applications that have to be reprocessed due to the department pulling the wrong tax data from the form and inability to make corrections if students made mistakes. This is another example of the Biden Administration incompetence. I am concerned about parents and students not having the answers they need to make these decisions and being left in limbo. Again, i am one of the parents. I am also concerned about the universities experiencing uncertainty around enrollment numbers resulting in their inability to budget. At thisat this point there is no get back the time that has been wasted. We have to consider how the department of education will be held to account and how they will support students and universities moving forward men moving forward. Have either of you received any support or guidance from the department on how to support students who are having difficulties with either submitting or editing their fafsa . We have received electronic guidance about when things are expected to be corrected. We received information about a Emails Service for schools having trouble. We have also received a request for departments to help each other, which is a natural instinct anyway. Sometimes i find out things on social media. It is unbelievable you do need to get information from social media and not the department. Fair. It has been a rich source of means about Financial Aid on social media. There are ways in which they are providing support, it has just been rapidly changing and revised and sometimes not with the most tone of partnership. I would say the department of education has put a lot more energy and research into providing support to institutions, Financial Aid offices, and students the last several months than it had leading up to the months when the fafsa should have launched. Unfortunately that is a little late in the process to be coming up with these resources. I do think this hearing in congress has had an impact. Last night, a new piece of guidance was far more correct direct than they had been in the weeks previous. We hope that will continue. As we talked about the College Support Strategy is providing boots on the Ground Support to Financial Aid offices. Again, it is coming after the crisis has hit. We are looking for Lessons Learned so we can improve this going forward, and i appreciate your personal experience with supporting the schools of indiana. We heard from universities calling to guarantee last years aid for students continuing their education. It is not something that would help . I think that would be a matter of last resort. If the department can bring online the functionality it is promising in the next couple of weeks, we will have turned a corner and we are hoping for that promise. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i want to thank our witnesses for being with us today. It is a very serious issue we are dealing with that affects millions of people across the country. I want to talk about responsibility, a trait noticeably absent in the department of education fafsa disaster. Ms. Feldman, is it the responsibility of North Carolina families to ensure the fafsa is not riddled with technical errors and actually allows students to submit information . Or is it the departments response ability . Ms. Feldman the responsibility of the department of education. Rep. Foxx mr. Draeger, thank you for being here again. Is it the responsibility of Financial Aid administrators to ensure data is cap related accurately . Mr. Draeger the department of education. Rep. Foxx mr. Kantrowitz, is it the responsibility of congress to implement a bipartisan law passed three years ago, or is it the departments response ability . Mr. Kantrowitz it is the departments responsibility. Rep. Foxx thank you for clarifying that, not just for the department, but for the American People who often wonder why we are not putting people in jail. During the Biden Administration, the department has certainly been busy. Of course being busy does not mean being effective. It certainly does not mean providing benefits to the American People. Mr. Kantrowitz, you worked on the fafsa for 25 years. Would you describe implementing the fafsa as one of the most important duties of the office of federal student aid and its chief operating officer, Richard Cordray . Mr. Kantrowitz it is a bread and butter issue, one of the primary responsibilities of the u. S. Department of education and office of federal student aid. Rep. Foxx ms. Feldman, have you ever seen a worse fafsa process . Ms. Feldman sadly i am old enough to remember when it was all on paper, so hopefully this will be a little better. But it is nothing but a disaster so far. Rep. Foxx do you feel like we will have a smooth process in 2025 . Ms. Feldman i hope it will be smoother but its hard to know and i dont anticipate it feels likely we will be ready in october, the usual date. Rep. Foxx mr. Draeger, instead of implementing the fafsa, it is now Crystal Clear that the Department Spent its time, resources, and staff over the last three years on political projects, some of which are unconstitutional. You believe the apartments political agenda was more helpful to the American People instead of ensuring 18 Million People have a working and timely fafsa . Mr. Draeger my hope is this committee bipartisanly will dig into the shortfalls of this implementation. Whatever the department was working on, if it detracted from the fafsa, we are now reaping the consequences and millions of students are stuck in limbo wondering how they are going to pay for college. Rep. Foxx thank you for clarifying that. This country deserves public leaders who fulfill their duties rather than shirk response abilities and point the finger of blame at others. I often say that my middle initial, a, stands for accountability. Now is the time for secretary cardona to explain his abysmal leadership to the American People. It is clear something needs to change. I yield back. Thank everyone for your testimony. I would like to recognize mr. Scott for his closing remarks. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and thank the witnesses for their testimony. Todays testimony underscores the need for swift action and accountability regarding fafsa accessibility, but we also need to get the program on track. The fafsa sublette vacation act was supposed to streamline the process and expand eligibility, but setbacks continue to jeopardize opportunities for students. We see this in the alarming decline of fafsa submissions, particularly among low income and minority students. As many High Schoolers approach graduation, urgency mounts for clear guidance and support from the department of education so that students and colleges can plan for the Upcoming School year. Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing and thank our witnesses for their testimony. I want to say thank you so much for your passion, for your understanding of this industry, and for educating American People on where we are and the threat to the system we have been used to for so long. I read your comments, your testimony. Each of you mention those who rolled up the sleeves who are working 16 hours a day weekends to make this happen. Realize we are talking about the leadership and not those really trying to make this thing work out. In terms of priority, in 2021 at the beginning of the administration, there was an appointment to chief operating officer for federal student aid Richard Cordray. Mr. Cordray has absolutely no student aid experience but he was a litigator expert from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in their attempts to waive that. I think we can see from the beginning where their priorities were. This is where we should put our energy to have the kind of results we have right now. It is time we asked ourselves an overdue question what is the ultimate purpose of the department of education . Most americans think it is to educate, to prepare our children to be the most intelligent and educated in the world permit instead administrators have brought chaos to students students seeking education. Readership has been distracted, undisciplined. Who has paid the price . Our most vulnerable, atrisk americans. Low to moderate income students, First Generation College students, and the underrepresented. Due to the chaos of the last three years, we have brought collateral damage. There will be some vulnerable small colleges who will not be able to absorb the 20 to 30 drop in enrollment. They will shudder. There will be damage to Small Businesses who depend on revenue generated by these college towns. The Biden Administration recently found the bandwidth to issue new rulings to threaten the existence of another educational sector, the career and technical institutions. D. C. Bureaucrats are demanding this institution reduce the length of their curriculum with no consideration of the impact this would have on outcomes. If they dont change the curriculum in an arbitrary and impossible timeline, they will not receive federal funding. Those who cannot meet these demands will face shuddering. Just like the fafsa dibacco we are now dealing with with the department of education and technical institutions, those who hurt the most are the low and moderate income students, first generation students, and underrepresented students. I began to wonder, based on the remarkable success and failure, if the true goal of the department of education is to educate. There is no accountability, no shame, no im sorry, we will get this right next time. And there is no sense of priority. As we look at where we are today, i am convinced that there will be 18 Million Students and families that remember they were not the priority the last two or three years but the priority was to make sure there was a Campaign Promise to forgive debt. Its great for the president s future but terrible for our kids future, and that is not the american way. We see a vision of a much greater, more perfect union. There is going to be accountability. I want to say also i am so impressed by what you have said today. How the Ranking Member has commented on how we need to make this work. We have a bipartisan agreement. We are going to make this work. So many of our children are not being served correctly and those most vulnerable are being hurt the most. I want to thank everyone for your comments, for your addition to our education. Without objections, there being no further business, the subcommittee now stands adjourned. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2022] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [inaudible]