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What's down ongoing FAFSA delays
Los Angeles — Oscar Garcia of South Los Angeles is conscionable weeks distant from taking his past steps arsenic a precocious schoolhouse senior, and his archetypal steps toward a assemblage degree.
Garcia said attending assemblage "means having an accidental to get retired of here."
It's an accidental made imaginable done the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, oregon FAFSA.
"FAFSA, man, they person a batch of issues," Garcia told CBS News. "It ever gave me, like, immoderate errors, oregon something. Yes, it was conscionable beauteous tedious."
After a botched rollout of past year's FAFSA application nether the Biden administration, it was delayed again this year, with students encountering mistake messages and glitches connected the site. Making things much challenging were the unprecedented cuts to the Department of Education past month, impacting astir fractional of the bureau of Federal Student Aid, which is liable for managing FAFSA.
Garcia, who volition beryllium attending Los Angeles Trade Tech Community College successful the fall, said helium tried to telephone the Federal Student Aid Information Center for assistance "more times than what I tin count. At immoderate constituent I conscionable wanted to stop."
Lina McCormick-Morin, lawman manager of the Southern California College Attainment Network — an acquisition equity radical that seeks to assistance underrepresented students execute a assemblage education, helps low-income students navigate the FAFSA system.
"The process is truly grueling," McCormick-Morin said. "It is genuinely similar filing taxes and being audited astatine the aforesaid time."
Thursday is National College Decision Day, which is the deadline for erstwhile astir college-bound students person to state which schoolhouse they volition be successful the fall.
McCormick-Morin has seen assemblage dreams enactment connected hold, arsenic lone 58% of eligible California precocious schoolhouse seniors successfully submitted FAFSA applications for the upcoming schoolhouse year, according to the California Student Aid Commission.
"It is hard to spot what is businesslike astir cutting the moving capableness of immoderate section that was already understaffed," McCormick-Morin said.
University of Southern California inferior Stephani Jaramillo and California State University, Northridge inferior Jose Pablo-Corona told CBS News they don't person information nets — they lone person FAFSA.
"I interest that without that help, I won't beryllium capable to proceed my education," Pablo-Corona said. "So I'm beauteous worried."
Jaramillo said that "for me, fiscal assistance is hope, it's a stepping chromatic to reaching a imaginable aboriginal that I've been looking guardant to my full life."
Now, some are acrophobic whether they volition spot their fiscal assistance successful clip to implicit college.
"Everyone chases immoderate benignant of American dream," Jaramillo said. "No substance what it looks like, immoderate benignant of, like, happiness and stability. For me, that's my education."
Tom Hanson is simply a nationalist investigative analogous for CBS News and Stations. His in-depth reports aerial crossed each platforms and programs. He is simply a subordinate of CBS News and Stations Medical, Health, and Wellness Unit.
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