CAPFAA August 2024 Newsletter

Letter from the President

Look how far we’ve come.

The 2024-2025 Award Year felt like a lost cause in many financial aid offices even before the close of the 2023 calendar year. FAFSA Simplification, the gift that keeps on taking, has wreaked for most of us, unnecessary havoc on all of our work. If “simplification” of our work wasn’t enough, new requirements have seemingly sprouted into existence from the Department of Education. While well-intentioned, Gainful Employment and Financial Value & Transparency reporting has come at an inopportune time as most schools are still struggling to catch up to financial aid deadlines several months in arrears. Vague, confusing, and redundant reporting guidelines make sense in the vacuous minds of distant higher education bureaucrats, but financial aid professionals are still struggling to process the nuances and questions of reporting redundancies left unanswered. Retirements and transitions to other offices or industries away from financial aid have skyrocketed, leaving behind an outcropping of hollowed-out aid offices staffed by doe-eyed FA professionals fearfully whispering to each other, “what’s next?”.

This may feel dreadfully hyperbolic to some, but also a not-too-distant reality for many. But alas, I’d argue we’re living in the best time.

Thirty years ago civilization envisioned 2024 as living on the moon, flying cars, and a general Jetson lifestyle antics. One needs to only rewatch Back to the Future II to realize the idealized vision we projected onto society's future. In many ways, we’ve missed the mark many would suggest, but I’d argue we’re killing it, especially in the higher education financial aid space.

It’d be easy to forgive anyone who scoffed at this year’s FAFSA as an improvement but most of us are old enough to remember when we’d see more illegible paper FAFSA’s, an administrative ball pit of work. At the time, the paper FAFSA seemed like a reasonable standard and in many ways allowed schools to triage unprocessed and incomplete applications more directly and have more direct conversations with students. However, the modern electronic FAFSA has done more than many of us could ever imagine. Skip-logic and required fields have taken much of the counseling work financial aid offices of the 90’s and early 00’s and placed it in the hands of modern technology’s wizardry. The now somewhat defunct Data Retrieval Tool made “The Student’s taxes paid is equal to the Student’s Adjusted Gross Income…” flags a distant memory. While the application at times seemed long and complex to students and parents, the ability to get things wrong and the items requiring follow-up diminished (even if the Department asked us to confirm more items).

On the flipside, despite complaints about the complexity and the push for a “postcard” FAFSA, here in Connecticut, FAFSA completion and technology have formed a worthwhile partnership boosting accessibility for thousands of high school seniors and other higher education learners. Connecticut boasts nearly a 60% FAFSA completion rate for high school seniors sitting 4th nationwide and only surpassed by schools with previously enacted FAFSA completion mandates for high school seniors or ones that offer free community college with FAFSA completion. Modern technology has made accessibility an achievable target for the Department’s free application as the internet is now available via smartphone or tablet rather than a clunky desktop with dial-up internet. I couldn’t help but stare with mild jealousy at one of my nephews breezing through income questions on an iPad a year or so ago, pen and paper about as distant a concept to him as a horse and buggy to me.

As I log into FSA Partners to delve into Departmental guidance on the new GE FVT reporting I’m both annoyed by the prospect of a new reporting requirement on my plate, and grateful for the plethora of information beckoned to the screens in front of me with a flurry of keystrokes. In this upcoming year, it feels like much has been heaped on our desks but looking back a few decades I’m reminded of a Tony Robbins quote that has helped move me in moments like this; “Trade your expectation to appreciation and the world changes instantly”. As we embark on another year in the world of financial aid, I ask that we all take a moment to appreciate the distance we’ve all traveled, without flying cars.

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2024 CAPFAA Winter Conference

December 8-10

Join us for the 6th Annual CAPFAA Scholarship fundraiser, the CAPFAA Classic, on Tuesday September 17th, 2024. Register now online.

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