California students panic after new financial aid application blocks them: ‘I don’t know who to call’
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A technical glitch is blocking students who are U.S. citizens — but whose parents aren’t — from completing their federal financial aid applications, and the problem is causing panic in California.
For many of these college applicants, it’s a crisis not only preventing them from applying for federal grants and loans, but also from applying for free tuition at the University of California and California State University or partial tuition waivers at private colleges in the state.
The deadline for that state aid is April 2 for new students, a date set by California law that only the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom can change.
“It makes me feel worried,” said Ashley Estrada, a high school senior at Diego Rivera Learning Complex in south Los Angeles. Estrada is a citizen while both her parents are undocumented. She has a high GPA and aspires to attend UC Berkeley, UCLA, Dartmouth or another elite campus.
“I don’t know who to call,” said Estrada, whose parents earn little money. “Because I already talked to all the adults around me and everyone’s just telling me to wait, and they don’t have an answer for me.”
She has attended financial aid workshops but cannot complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as FAFSA. She called the customer support line listed on the application, but the call disconnected, she said.
When parents without Social Security numbers try to fill out the application on behalf of their children, they get an error message that blocks them from continuing. Without the parental information, students cannot complete the FAFSA. California State University’s director of financial aid, Noelia Gonzalez, wrote in an email that U.S. Department of Education officials told the university that they “expect to have a fix prior to April 2.”
An Education Department spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the record about the matter.
The problem is new and emerged this year. Federal law only requires that the student applying for federal aid be a citizen or have permanent status, but in most cases that aid is calculated based on parents’ or a spouse’s income information.
The scale of the financial aid application fiasco
Likely tens of thousands of California students are unable to complete the FAFSA because their parents aren’t citizens, but a firm number is impossible to calculate, said Jake Brymner, a deputy director with the California Student Aid Commission, the agency that oversees the state’s $3.4 billion financial aid program. He noted that last year 108,000 students in California didn’t include their parents’ Social Security numbers in their FAFSA applications. That could be because the parents lacked one or they didn’t want to provide their numbers.
“I am from a low-income area and most of our parents are undocumented,” Estrada said. “I’m upset that we’re going through this.”
The typical low-income student caught in the federal technology imbroglio stands to lose as much as $14,000 in state tuition waivers known as the Cal Grant and $7,400 through the federal Pell Grant, plus the ability to borrow subsidized loans and other tools to afford college. Also on the line is a state scholarship worth up to several thousand dollars that also has an April 2 deadline.
“This is a major concern for the financial aid community across the country,” said Jose Aguilar, the financial aid director for UC Riverside.
Possible state grant fix
While state policymakers cannot do anything about students locked out of federal aid, the state’s student aid commission is considering a workaround for accessing state grants and scholarships. The idea is to permit affected students to complete the state financial aid application reserved for undocumented students and other non-citizens who aren’t eligible for federal support. That form is called the California Dream Act Application, one that tens of thousands of undocumented students already use. The commission does not share information in the Dream Act application with the federal government or with immigration authorities.
The aid commission is conferring with state universities about this proposal. But that fix will “create a lot of confusion for these students,” said Aguilar. He is worried that if the students whose parents don’t have Social Security numbers complete the Dream Act application, they won’t realize they’ll also have to submit the FAFSA when the Biden administration fixes the problem.
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