FAFSA problems decline, but administrators and education officials may experience issues

SALT LAKE CITY — Delays, glitches and processing errors caused major problems for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid last year. Some students didn’t even receive their FAFSA aid by the time the semester started.

Associate Vice President of Enrollment at Salt Lake Community College, Ryan Farley, said less people are applying for aid. He said this has been happening since the launch of the department’s simplified application.

“The information coming out of the National Council of College Attainment Network [is] showing that we are significantly behind, not only the state but nationwide on FAFSA completion,” Farley said.

Farley said the school’s department has beefed up staffing because of the issue.

“We have definitely tried to adjust and reallocate some of our individuals to be more available, to meet the demands, especially as [applications] came online fully in the late spring,” he said.

According to Farley, FAFSA is seeing fewer issues with applications. He said if any issues do come up, they’ll most likely be on the administrators and education officials’ side.

Farley said as long as education officials are working on getting forms in and corrected on time, there shouldn’t be many issues.

“It’s a matter of us institutionally catching up and getting that aid out the door as quickly as we can,” Farley said.

The Department of Education said as of right now, it’s not expecting any delays in aid being delivered. The department is also cutting back on its workload to focus on getting money out on time.

Student aid is expected to be sent out by Oct. 1.

Alexandrea Bonilla is a producer, reporter and anchor for KSL NewsRadio.

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