Subcommittee on Higher Education. The subcommittee will come to order. The chair is authorized to call recess at any time. Welcome to todays hearing the subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to call recess at any time. Welcome to todays hearing, titled tran26 examining the impacts of students, families and schools. When it comes the 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 post secondary education. It opens doors and provides assistance to individuals seeking to pursue academic ambitions, regardless of 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 college growing every year, it was incredibly important to reform the fafsa process for families. The new law streamlined the long application process, and in some cases, students could see the number of questions on the forms shrink from 18 to 18 from 103. As weve learned over the past three years, the Biden Administrations greatest success is its failure at everything it attempts to do. Today, the committee is poised for a familiar challenge oversight. Despite our efforts, the department of educations fafsa rollout was mired in delays and dysfunction. The department of education botched it threatens to damage students, families and institutions. First off, the fafsa implication has been a federal law since the Biden Administration on day one. That did not stop the department of education from pursuing for pushing, five months, the initial launch date to a soft launch in december of 2023. Five months. The department of education did rollout the new fafsa, and students were met with glitches, and a myriad of technical issues. Some students could not complete the form at all. For those who managed to complete the form, the transmission of key numbers to schools was 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. There may be a new and by the time this hearing is over. These failures do not just impact the taxpayer, who always pays the cost of bureaucratic dysfunction. An estimated 20 drop in enrollment this year. Lower income students that require access to aid are the hardest hit, and these delays do not even count for next years fafsa, which will almost, certainly, not be ready by october. This is unfathomable to me, that the office of federal student aid received over 2 billion last year. 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 hea reauthorization act. Weve had 30 years of a functioning system that serves hundreds of millions of students. Within three years, the Biden Administration and department of education has managed to bring the educational industry to a possible Game Changing crisis. What is the answer to this debacle . He is asking for an additional 625 million to add to the office of federal student aids budget. We are left to conclude that instead of doing the job it was tasked to do, which is helping over 18 million potential students apply for fafsa, this administration opted to waste months of time and energy on a reelection strategy. On an unconstitutional student loan forgiveness scheme. Students, schools and institutions deserve answers. It is our responsibility, as congress, to hold the executive branch accountable. I look forward to working together with members on this committee to learn from this botched rollout and to ensure the smooth, clear, and honest fafsa process moving forward. I yield to the Ranking Member for her opening statement. Thank you so much, chairman owens. And, thank you to the witnesses for coming today. We know that a College Degree is the surest pathway to economic mobility in america. Unfortunately, for many low income 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. For years, the pell grants have helped some of the 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 forms 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, get, many still dont have that information today. I would like to remind everyone that College Decision day, which should be a joyous event, where students declare where they will go in the fall, is may 1st, 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 5000 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 brakes on efforts to widen access to Higher Education, and Financial Stability for students of color, first generation students, and those from low income backgrounds. According to the National College attainment network, only 32. 3 of students from low income high schools completed the fafsa form , a 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 decreased from the previous year. The stark reality directly imposes the intended purpose of the simplification act, serving as a slap in the face to students wanting to be somebody at achieve the promise of Higher Education. While i agree that holding the department accountable and investigating 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. I would like to request inclusion in the record, the tampa bay times, tuesday, may 9th, 2024, entitled, florida student aid request plunge. How many were delayed or even skipped college . No objection. Thank you. Pursuant to Committee Rules h. C. All who want to introduce written statements may do so thank you. Pursuant to community rules, all members that wish to submit written statement may do so to the Committee Clerk electronically in microsoft word format by 5 00 p. M. 14 days after the hearing which is april 24, 2024. Without objection, objection remain open 14 days to allow statements and materials referenced during the hearing to be submitted to the official hearing record. I would like to turn the time to introduce four distinguished witnesses. The first is president of cerebral institute, which is located, sorry about that, located in skokie, illinois. The next witness is the ceo of National Association of Student National aid administrators located in washington, d. C. The third witness is ms. Kim cook, ceo of College Attainment network located in washington, d. C. The final witness is rachel fieldsman, the vice provost for enrollment at university of North Carolina chapel hill located in chapel hill North Carolina, thank you so much. We thanked the witnesses for being here today and testimony pursuant to Committee Rules, limit or a presentation to five minute summary of your written statement. I would like to remind witnesses to be aware of their responsibility to provide Accurate Information to the subcommittee. I would like to start off with recognizing mr. Kantrowitz. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I thank you for convening on 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 Workforce Development this morning. My name is mark kantrowitz. In 1996, i developed a prototype of online soft for that led to the fact that ring made available on the web. Since then, i provided Public Comment on draft fafsa every year, i wrote a bestselling book about the fafsa and several consumer facing website about Financial Aid. My mission is to deliver practical information advising tools to students and family so they can make smarter, more informed decisions about paying for college. Im pleased to have the opportunity to share my insights with the committee today. The rollout of the 2024 25 fafsa plagued by delays, communication failures, frustrating and impossible process for students, families, colleges, scholarship providers. Numerous missed implementation deadlines, long delays, broken promises, clogged call centers, and i. T. Errors. There has been lack of transparency with the challenges and delays portrayed in overly optimistic fashion. The goal of fafsas implication was to make it easier for students and families to file the fafsa thereby eliminating it as a barrier to College Access and success by low and moderate income students, First Generation College student, underrepresented students and other atrisk students. The launch of the new form has been a disaster in this regard lets review how we got here. Congress passed the fafsas implication that on december 27, 2020 effective for the 2023 24 award year. When the u. S. Department of education said they could not implement the simplified fafsa schedule, Congress Passed technical correction act on march 15, 2022 to the late implementation until 2024 25. The contract for the simplified fafsa was not awarded until march 2022, 15 months after passage of the fafsa simplification act. U. S. Department of education did not launch fafsa until december 30, 2023 after three months of the usual october 1st start date. It was open for half an hour that day. Problems prevented many students and families from filing the new fafsa, 15 problems remain on unresolved. Students and families call the Information Center for help, they spent hours on hold, calls and email messages went unanswered. The u. S. Department of education did not initially implement inflationary adjustments with the fafsa Financial Aid formulas as required by the fafsa simplification act despite being told about the problem in may 2023. They did not decide to fix the problem until january 2024 after learning middle income students would lose an average of about 1600 in Financial Aid and high income students an average of 4600. On january 30, 2024, the day colleges were supposed to start receiving processed fafsa data, the u. S. Department of education announced another unprecedented six week delay. When fafsa processing began mid march of 2024, applicants were not able to make corrections yielding high error rates. There were also errors that affect about a quarter of all fafsa including errors in the calculus in a dependent student assets and tax data. Applicants have a few weeks to make the most momentous decision of their lives. There are 2. 8 million fewerfafsas filed this year compared to the same time last year, 15 drop overall. The drop in College Enrollment may have worsened during the pandemic causing some colleges to close. Several factors contributed to the fafsa fiasco. Rather than remove questions to simplify the fafsa, u. S. Department of education decided to change Everything Everywhere all at once , including overhaul of the antiquated fafsa processing infrastructure. At the same time, there was a restart of repayment for federal Student Loans, proposals for student loan forgiveness, and the new save income driven replacement plan. 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 staff and funding might have helped. Mr. Chairman, i once again thank you and the committee for taking interest in the development of the simplified fafsa and inviting me to share my thoughts on the matter. I would be happy to answer questions we have on this or other topics. Thank you, mr. Kantrowitz , appreciate it. The next witness. Thank you, mr. Chairman, chairman allen, Ranking Member wilson, other distinguished members of the committee. I represent 3000 college and University Career school Financial Aid offices and today look at their perspective. I want to take us back a couple months to january 30, 2024. That will live in the collective trauma of most Financial Aid officers across the country. That was the day schools were expecting to receive roughly 3 million fafsa files from the u. S. Department of education. To be clear, that to the students who completed the fafsa up to that point, anything but smooth sailing. They had gone through a form that was only available at certain times of the day and riddled with riches, to put it mildly. By january 30th, that was the day the department told schools they would 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 need based 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, students have started sending out Early Admissions. Schools were in the coming weeks going to start sending out regular admissions to buy that point, students had already started receiving admissions decisions, what they did not know and still dont know today is how they are going to pay for it. You will understand that on january 30th, they were anxiously awaiting at their desks for the fafsa files, they were aghast when what they instead received was a notice from the department of education that fafsa files would be delayed another two months. 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 unfortunately fits a pattern repeated throughout the launch and negatively impacting every school, every student, every family in your district to and what is that pattern . Lastminute communication from the department of education throwing schools and schools and families into chaos. It is drastic and farreaching policy decisions making everyone do 90 degree to times is not 180 degree directional changes. And it is bad news buried in celebratory publicity. That is usually stuff reserved for press releases, that is fine, i come from the world of pr and communications. Stuff that is usually in press releases has made its way into operational releases to this isnt just a petty list of grievances, this really adds up to a crisis of credibility for the department of education. That brings me to today, my written testimony lays out with painstaking detail where we are. I want to wrap up with two points, overhauling the fafsa was a big deal, it was a big operational lift. It was necessary and important that maybe the thing i want to highlight most of all, it was congressionally mandated bipartisanly. 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 that schools have are riddled with errors. Another 20 of the files on top of that, on average, dont have the numbers that the Financial Aid offices need to actually calculate any awards. That means 40 of the fafsa files schools have are not usable. To calculate Financial Aid office offers for students, that is on average, some schools are higher. Here is the hard truth, i dont ta