The FAFSA Fiasco’s Forgotten Students

Almost as soon as the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA) launched in December, Axel Valencia logged in. A first-generation student and the child of undocumented immigrants, Valencia, currently a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had had a hard enough time with the federal aid form he filled out to get to college in 2022. After months of disquieting news about the new form’s many delays, he made sure he was on the student aid website early—over his winter break, months before most college students began thinking about renewing their FAFSA. He immediately found himself waylaid by technical errors.