Botched FAFSA rollout, state upgrades mean college students are still waiting for critical grant money

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HARRISBURG — The money for the fall semester normally arrives in September.

By the last week of November, with the end of the semester in sight, Elizabeth Rousseau was still waiting.

Rousseau, a student at Penn State, is due to receive $2,630 from a state grant program that helps Pennsylvania residents pay for college. The money can be used for anything from tuition, fees, room and board, to other living expenses like utilities and groceries.

Rousseau, who takes classes online, lives with her husband and two young children in Luzerne County. As a result of the grant delays, she said, they paid their rent late for the first time in years. They are also two months behind on utility bills. In late November, Rousseau took out a personal loan to avoid falling further behind.

While money from the PA State Grant Program has started to go out, students across Pennsylvania are still waiting. Many have been scrambling to cover the shortfall, often with no clear answers about when the grant funds will be available.

Rousseau said the financial strain has made her anxiety worse, and she has been late on her assignments more often than usual this semester. “It’s hard to not just worry about it a lot.”

Officials at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, which runs the grant program, say the problems can be traced back to the troubled rollout of a new federal application form for financial aid. PHEAA uses data from the federal form to administer the state grant program, which offers eligible Pennsylvania residents up to $5,750 per year.

More than 100,000 students will receive grant funds in the 2024-25 academic year, the agency estimates.

PHEAA uses the federal data to determine students’ eligibility; colleges and universities then update that information before PHEAA sends them the money and they pay it out to students.

This year, however, PHEAA didn’t start receiving data from the federal government until mid-April, months behind schedule, said Bethany Coleman, a PHEAA spokesperson.

The records were “riddled with errors” and had to be updated, which caused further delays. When the revised data arrived in May, the agency was swamped by the sheer volume; the files typically arrive in smaller batches.

The various mishaps left the state agency with only four months to complete work that usually takes nine, Coleman said.

Compounding the difficulty, PHEAA has also been rolling out a new system of its own this year. This effort wasn’t intended to coincide with the federal changes, agency officials previously told ABC27. The federal overhaul went into effect a year later than anticipated, with the state upgrades already underway.

Students usually get their grant money within the first few weeks of the semester. This year, however, PHEAA did not begin sending the money to most schools until the end of October.

By Nov. 25, PHEAA had sent $154 million to colleges and universities, Coleman said.

It’s not clear exactly how many students are still waiting for the grants.

“Every single day, more money is flowing,” Coleman told Spotlight PA. “We’re past the hump.”

Michael Driscoll, president of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said the federal delays combined with PHEAA’s internal upgrades created a “perfect storm.” But he also said the agency did not appear to have fully anticipated the problems created by switching to a new system.

At one point, PHEAA’s phone system was still giving details on grants from the previous academic year, he said. Some representatives gave students incorrect information. The data the university received from the agency was incomplete, and making corrections was difficult and time-consuming. As of Nov. 26, about one-third of IUP’s estimated 3,100 eligible students were still waiting for the money.

“What was the backup plan?” Driscoll said. “Just hoping that a major software system works is not good enough.”

At Temple University, only a handful of students are still waiting for the grants, said Emilie Van Trieste, director of student financial services. The university accepted an offer from PHEAA to receive an advance on the funding in mid-September, she said. The trade-off was that university staff had to manually confirm students’ eligibility, instead of receiving a bulk file transfer.

“The downside is that we were taking on a little bit of a risk,” Van Trieste said. But the decision allowed the university to get the money to most students throughout late September and October.

Coleman said that PHEAA offered to advance funds to all eligible schools in Pennsylvania, but only seven took the agency up on the offer.

Harrisburg Area Community College declined because this would effectively involve borrowing money from the agency and is “not standard practice,” said Tim Barshinger, assistant vice president of student enrollment services.

By the last week of November, HACC had not paid grant funds to any students. Some students will receive the money the first week of December, while others will have to wait longer because the school still needs PHEAA to confirm they are eligible, Barshinger said via email.

Penn State did not accept PHEAA’s offer of an advance either, instead choosing “in-house solutions to protect these students until their actual grant awards are calculated and received,” a spokesperson said.

By Nov. 25, the university still had not received “valid” award information for students, the spokesperson said.

Penn State Executive Director for Student Aid Melissa Kunes said in a statement that there was not a specific date when students could expect to receive the grants, although the university hoped it would be before the end of the fall semester. Classes end Dec. 13.

Many colleges and universities are forgiving late fees and relaxing policies that typically prevent students from registering for classes or graduating if they have an outstanding balance. However, many students rely on the grant money for living expenses, and the delays have forced some to make difficult decisions.

Timothy Ladd, a senior at Penn State, had to take on extra shifts at work to make up the shortfall, leaving him less time to look for the internship he needs to graduate. “I had to change my plans completely,” he said.

Melissa Bush, a student at Lehigh Carbon Community College, planned to use the grant money to register for classes in December.

“This is just wild to me,” Bush wrote last month in a Facebook message to PHEAA. “I’ve never had to wait this long.”

In addition to the delays, some students say a lack of clear communication from PHEAA, and a series of shifting timeframes, have contributed to the stress and confusion.

PHEAA originally told students that the new online portal would be available in June, but some didn’t receive the link to register until August. The portal is how students check their status and correspond with PHEAA.

The agency said it would send the money to colleges and universities in October, but, in most cases, that process didn’t get underway until Oct. 31.

PHEAA representatives have told some students that most will have the money in November; others, that it will take at least until mid-December.

Coleman said that timelines have shifted “both forward and backward” and that PHEAA has “strived to keep open lines of communication” with schools, students, and their families through various channels.

Some students face a double dose of uncertainty.

Sarah Cook, a student at Temple University, sat down in August to plan her finances for the semester. She anticipated that the state grant would arrive later than usual, but she didn’t think it would take this long.

The delay has blown a $2,600 hole in her budget. She’s had to rely on her boyfriend to cover her share of the rent for the past two months and has been using a credit card for groceries and other living expenses. By late November, she was almost 30 days behind on the credit card bill.

“I’m trying to make smart financial decisions and I just didn’t foresee this happening,” she said.

Adding to the stress, Cook is still waiting for PHEAA to confirm that she is eligible for the grant.

PHEAA has told her repeatedly that her application is complete, but the grant doesn’t show up when she logs into her account. In late October, after she followed up again, the agency replied that it was “still in the process of determining” her eligibility.

The most likely explanation was that PHEAA “needed to catch up on their processing,” Temple’s financial aid office told Cook in an email several weeks ago. “We don't know how many students are in limbo.”

The possibility that, after waiting so long, Cook might find out she does not qualify is too overwhelming to think about.

“I don’t even know what I would do.”

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