The View From the FAFSA Trenches

Nine months ago, Kiely Fletcher, admissions director and vice president of enrollment management at the University of Illinois at Chicago, woke up to some disconcerting news: Processing for student federal aid forms, a crucial precursor to colleges’ financial aid packaging procedures, would be delayed by months, throwing her entire spring schedule into disarray. As the rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid continued stumbling along, the gut punches kept coming, from further processing delays to calculation errors that added to her office’s substantial workload. Fletcher said she and her peers felt blindsided almost every week by a new setback. She wondered whether they were as surprising to the department as they were to her.