The FAFSA Drama Continues - Part 17 (echo)

Blog readers who followed our various posts on the FAFSA screw-up last year may wonder what the consequence was. For those who were responsible for the screw-up, it's not clear there were consequences. However, it did affect potential students - probably permanently.

From Inside Higher Ed: Higher ed institutions this fall experienced the steepest drop in first-year enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center... Four-year institutions saw the largest decline, with an 8.5 percent drop at public colleges and a 6.5 percent decline at nonprofit privates. At institutions that serve the highest numbers of Pell-eligible students, first-year enrollment fell by more than 10 percent.

The declines appear to be part of the fallout from last cycle’s bungled rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which many observers predicted would result in a devastating setback to low-income and underrepresented student enrollment. FAFSA completion rates for incoming first-year students—who were high school seniors during the previous financial aid cycle—still lag about 9 percent behind last year, according to data from the National College Attainment Network...

The compounding enrollment declines aren’t likely to reverse without significant shifts in the next few years, [National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Doug] Shapiro said—a daunting prospect considering the traditional college-going population is predicted to fall off a cliff next year. “The nearest precedent we have for this is fall 2020, when we saw a 7 percent plunge in freshmen,” he said. “We tracked them for the next two years and found an infinitesimal number of them coming back next year or the year after. Based on that, prospects of a rebound are low.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2024/10/23/after-fafsa-issues-steep-drop-first-year-enrollment.