DENVER — This week, the U.S. Department of Education reported another problem with federal financial aid forms that impacts about one million applicants.
According to Department of Education administrators, some colleges received the wrong information about some families' finances due to inaccurate tax data from the IRS.
Over the last few months the federal application for student aid or FAFSA has faced a number of issues while the government works to simplify the form.
“Families had issues with actually submitting the FAFSA. Parents or spouses who didn't have social security numbers, which impacts a large majority of families throughout the nation — they weren't able actually to submit the FAFSA. That (issue) has been resolved,” said Jennifer Helgason, Metropolitan State University of Denver director of compliance.
Helgason said the issue with tax information impacts the Student Aid Index and will cause many of those applications to be reprocessed.
In the meantime, universities across the country are pushing back key deadlines.
“Deadlines in terms of a priority deadline or target deadline when institutions recommend that families have FAFSAs submitted… Those are deadlines in our office that we are pushing back. Where normally it was around April 1, we've pushed that back to May 3, where it's a target where we're recommending you have your FAFSA submitted by then,” Helgason said. “We've also pushed back our scholarship application for next year from March 1 to May 15. You know, even though the scholarship applications are not necessarily impacted by all these issues, it kind of goes hand in hand for students.”
University of Colorado Denver graduate student Jordan Gertner said she hasn’t been caught up in the FAFSA glitch but she’s grateful for the extended deadlines.
“It's kind of a hassle. I've had other stuff, scholarships, and stuff I'm applying to. So yeah, I just haven't gotten to it yet,” Gertner said.
Helgason said once all the glitches are worked out, the new form won’t be as daunting for Gertner and other students.
MSU Denver is hosting FAFSA workshops on April 8 and April 24 from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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