FAFSA delays causing some local colleges to extend 'Decision Day'

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - The U.S. Department of Education's changes to the FAFSA form announced last December were supposed to make things less anxiety-inducing for students - not more so.

The federal government has made recent changes to the federal application for student aid (FAFSA) in attempts to provide more students with financial aid and simplify the process, by lessening the questions that are required in order to complete the form compared to the previous version.

So what's the issue?

The application has experienced a serious of problems, which include calculation errors, glitches and other delays, which in turn have prevented students from determining how much financial aid they can receive.

"A lot of the issues that have come up have to do with what are called FSA IDs, which really is the student and their family's opportunity to authenticate their identity on the front end of the process, and then to sign the form at the end. That is the part of the process that I'm finding is creating the most havoc out there," explains James Nowak, Canisius University's Associate Director of Enrollment and Financial Aid Services in an interview with WBEN on Wednesday.

"Those families who can get through that first part of the process are usually able to finish it up pretty quickly. The only problem after that is reprocessing issues with the Department of Education, so even if the family does everything that they need to do correctly, the Department of Ed. is not holding up their end of the bargain in terms of turning around that information to schools in a timely manner."

And as a result of most students not finding how much money they receive in the typical timeframe in March, many of our local colleges are pushing back the universal May 1 deadline to determine whether or not students want to enroll in their school for the fall semester.

Although not officially announced since the publication of this article, Nowak tells WBEN they intend on extending the decision day to May 15, uniform to other local colleges that have already made that decision.

"We were hoping that we would receive more reprocessed FAFSA information in a little bit quicker timeline, but that didn't come to fruition. There is still benefit to depositing by May 1 in terms of access to priority registration housing. We are offering a bookstore credit for those who deposit early but obviously, we are sympathetic to the delayed timeline proposed here by the Department of Ed. So, we're gonna go ahead and extend to May 15. That decision is forthcoming, and we expect to announce it in the coming days."

SUNY Niagara (formerly NCCC) is doing things a little differently, according to the college's Director of Financial Aid Jim Trimboli. As of now, the school has plans to start processing students in the beginning of May as usual.

"The reason for that is because every time the government has a setback, then those computer systems have to be updated. And we're waiting for one more patch to go into our computer system so we can start packaging those students. And how we're kind of combating this here is by open communication with students and staff.

And also we have decided here at the college not to raise our tuition and fees this year. For our summer session, that starts very shortly in May, we're telling students that we're not going to charge them any late fees. And [communicating to them] don't worry about your payments right now, because this is not only affecting us, it's affecting all campuses in the United States."

In addition, SUNY Chancellor John King on Tuesday announced expanding SUNY’s efforts to support students completing the FAFSA application, high school seniors, working adults, and other SUNY applicants will be offered more opportunities to connect with financial aid experts so they can submit the FAFSA to determine what financial aid is available to them and make a more informed decision about the future of their education.

All SUNY campuses will hold at least one additional in-person or virtual event during this period, click here for more details.