"Justin Chase Brown took last week off. It was spring break at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he serves as director of scholarships and financial aid. 'Just trying to have a little calm,' he told The Chronicle last Friday, 'before the storm gets even worse,'" The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

... "After all the processing is done, the CPS produces one electronic 'output document' for applicants and another for colleges. Students and families get a Student Aid Report showing their SAI. And each institution that an applicant designated on the FAFSA gets an ISIR for that student. And the latter includes a slew of technical details."

"'Colleges get a ton more information on an ISIR than you would get just from a FAFSA,' said Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, known as NASFAA. 'You can see the actual math, all the interim calculations that went into determining the student’s SAI. It includes all these indicators, these little flags that say, ‘This student should be able to get this, this student doesn’t qualify for that.’ Because you can see the student’s loan-borrowing history, the ISIR will tell the college, ‘Hey, you can’t give the student a full loan this year because they’re up against their aggregate maximum.’ Or it will indicate that even though the student appears to be eligible for a Pell Grant, you can’t give them one because they reached their lifetime eligibility.'"

... "As colleges scramble to load ISIRs and issue aid offers, a crucial question will continue to loom over everything: How many prospective and returning students will file a FAFSA this year?"

"'With only six million FAFSAs submitted to date, we’re still really far behind past years,' said Desjean, at NASFAA. 'The department can catch up on its backlog, but then we need all the people who haven’t yet done a FAFSA to complete one. They’ve been hearing that it doesn’t work, that it’s complicated, and that they won’t be able to do it — all the things that people used to say about the FAFSA that FAFSA simplification was supposed to fix.'"

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 3/20/2024