Ricketts Slams Department of Education’s FAFSA Fiasco on the Senate Floor: “Incompetence”
May 2, 2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) spoke on the Senate floor about the Biden administration’s incompetent rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form.
“Today is National College Decision Day,” said Senator Ricketts.“And because of the Biden administration’s incompetence, it has become National College Indecision Day… Why are we asking our college students to make that decision about where they’re going to go to college without knowing how much financial aid they’re going to be able to get – to know whether or not it’s affordable? It’s absolutely crazy and it’s terrible customer service.”
“Instead of doing their job on FAFSA, the Biden administration’s education department has wasted time on unconstitutional student loan bailouts. Their priorities are completely misplaced…” Ricketts closed. “I support my colleagues’ efforts to get to the answers about this FAFSA fiasco and stand by, ready to yet again force the Biden administration to do its job.”
TRANSCRIPT
Senator Ricketts: “I now want to talk about an example where government is not working, and that’s the FAFSA fiasco. FAFSA,standing for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
“Now, this is what students go through to be able to get student aid, to be able to apply to college, and then know what that college is going to cost them so they can budget and afford it out.
“It’s an incredibly important program for millions of students across this country every single year. And what I want to do is just talk about how that has become such a disaster.
“Today is National College Decision Day. And because of the Biden administration’s incompetence, it has become National College Indecision Day as so many students are left in limbo by theincompetence of the Biden administration, that could not roll out a new FAFSA form for students to use and get the information to colleges, so colleges can make decisions, get the information back to students, and then students could decide where they want to go to school.
“Let’s just walk through the timeline a little bit here. Back in March of last year, the Department of Education said that they were going to have the new form out in December of 2023.
“Now, normally this form comes out in October, October 1st, so that students can get working on it right away, get the information in, get the information back, apply for school, all that sort of thing.
“But we knew it was going to be delayed. Well, then on November 15th, they said: “well, it’ll be December 31st before we have this form available. So, pushed back to the very end of December.
“Now, they did get that new form launched, it was a soft launch on December 30th, but immediately students start experiencing problems. Then what they said is: “well, we’re not going to get the information back to universities until we get some information, and it won’t be until January.” And they did launch the form full-on January 8th.
“But of course, they’d already experienced glitches on December 30th, so we’re still experiencing glitches and problems in January. Well, then in January, the Department of Education realized they had a problem and said: “well, we’re not actually going to get out the information back to be able to process this till the first half of March.”And then in March, they said: “well, students won’t really be able to start making corrections to these forms until the first half of April.”
“And so, time and time again, the Biden Department of Education kept pushing back the changes because they had [an] incompetent process to be able to manage this and get this done for students in a timely manner. And that problem is still going on right now.
“Millions of aid forms had errors and had to be reprocessed. I’ve had parents talk to me. We’ve had a number of people call in my office, talking about all the problems we’ve heard from Nebraskans struggling with this.
“One of my constituents from Ord, called us frustrated after they tried to apply online, several days in a row, only to find the FAFSA website was down.
“Another Nebraskan called because there was a deadline for corrections in their FAFSA form, but when they went to make those corrections and went to the form, they saw there was no place on the online form to make those corrections.
“And parents told me that there was no one they could contact to be able to ask questions.
“One parent told me they have two students that are already in college. They had applied through the forms again, put their forms in again, got rejected twice. But nobody could tell them why, they couldn’t get through to anybody, tell them what was going on.
“We had another example in Nebraska. This constituent from Geneva contacted us in February because they had questions about the process of particular state and local grants. They had called FAFSA repeatedly. They rarely got somebody in the FAFSA office to answer. And even when they did, the FAFSA staff never had the answer to their questions.
“This is terrible customer service. It’s exactly what’s wrong with a massive, unaccountable federal bureaucracy. The federal government always needs to put the taxpayers first, these are our customers. And as a result of these delays, colleges and universities have been forced to consider pushing back their admission deadlines for accepting students to commit.
“For example, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has extended their enrollment deposit deadline for incoming undergraduates until May 15th. However, not every college and university was able to make that choice.
“The Biden administration’s incompetence has forced some students to make their college decisions and pay a deposit without knowing exactly how much college will cost them. Now think about how crazy that is.
“Would we ever say to somebody, “yeah, why don’t you go out and buy that mutual fund” without knowing how much it’s going to cost, or“go out and buy that car” and not know how much it was going to cost, or “go out and buy a house” and not know how much it wouldcost.
“We wouldn’t do that anywhere else. Why are we asking our college students to make that decision about where they’re going to go to college without knowing how much financial aid they’re going to be able to get – to know whether or not it’s affordable?
“It’s absolutely crazy and it’s terrible customer service. And another example of the incompetence of the Biden administration, to be able to actually do the basic functions of government that we all rely on.
“We should do everything we can to make it easier for taxpayers to access and navigate government services.
“Instead of doing their job on FAFSA, the Biden administration’s education department has wasted time on unconstitutional student loan bailouts.
“Their priorities are completely misplaced. Instead of focusing on the things that they have to do for millions of students, to deliver good service, to help them get into college, we’re talking about forgiving the very loans that they can’t deliver in the first place. That’s how they’re spending their time.
“This is just unbelievably incompetent. I support my colleagues’efforts to get to the answers about this FAFSA fiasco and stand by, ready to yet again force the Biden administration to do its job.