College students in Montana left an estimated $9 million in available tuition support unused last year. Higher education officials are hopeful the federal government’s efforts to overhaul the federal financial aid process will encourage more students to take advantage of the support they’re eligible for, despite pronounced glitches with the rollout.
As prospective students apply for admission to colleges, they can complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. The questionnaire determines their eligibility for financial aid administered by the Department of Education. Colleges receive that data, and use it to put together a tailored aid package that might include Pell grants plus work-study opportunities, university scholarships and other forms of support to applicants as part of their acceptance offers.
In Montana, those financial aid packages are provided to applicants in January, and prospective students have until May to make enrollment decisions. Due to an education department slowdown, FAFSA data for this application cycle — students looking to start in the fall semester — won’t be made available to colleges until months later than expected.
Financial aid offices, which typically have months to put together financial aid packages, send them to students and answer questions as a student thinks through options, will be forced to deliver on a severely truncated timeline — as short as a few weeks — to meet decision deadlines. The federal delay leaves students and families in the lurch as they consider their future in higher education and whether they can afford it.
“That’s where the immediate stress will start to hit campuses,” said Galen Hollenbaugh, spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education. “Everyone is all hands on deck waiting.”
For this cycle, the Department of Education revamped the FAFSA form, a change designed to make cashing in on federal financial aid easier. It reduced the notoriously cumbersome list of questions from over 100 to a few dozen. It also adjusted its formula to increase the amount of money students can receive to account for inflation.
“Campus aid offices are very aware of how important the aid packages are for students to make decisions,” Hollenbaugh said. “They will get the aid packages turned around as quickly as possible once the schools receive the data they need from the feds.”
The number of graduating high school seniors in Montana who had submitted a FAFSA by Jan. 26 declined by 57% as compared with the same time last year, according to analysis from the National College Attainment Network. That’s a tick above the average drop nationally.
Montana ranks 30th in the country for the percentage of graduating high school seniors who had completed a FAFSA by the same date at 14.7%.
“It’s not as high as we would like it to be,” Hollenbaugh said about the rate of FAFSA completion in the state. “We can always look to have greater student involvement. Some of that is that I’m not sure if students are aware that it’s an application, only looking at eligibility, not a contract.”
Despite these early hiccups, OCHE officials are optimistic that efforts to streamline FAFSA will encourage more Montanans to take advantage of financial aid from the federal government.
Across the 16 MUS campuses, the percentage of students receiving federal financial aid in the form of Pell grants has declined over the past decade. As of the 2022-2023 academic year, just 31% of students received the federal dollars, although the average grant size is larger than it’s ever been at $5,275, according to MUS data.
Students on the two-year campuses tend to receive Pell grants at a higher rate than those on the four-year campuses. Last academic year, Pell grants were awarded to 39% of first-time students across Montana’s two-year programs and 29% at four-year programs.
MSU Billings had the highest rate of Pell grant recipients compared with other MUS four-year campuses, at nearly 40%. Montana Tech in Butte and MSU Bozeman were the lowest at roughly 23%.
Those rates represent a significant amount of money left on the table. As Hollenbaugh explains, the $9 million in estimated federal financial aid forgone by Montana college students last year comes from looking at how many people in the state are eligible for free and reduced lunch in schools.
“This is about access, and how we can create more opportunities for high school students. We want to make sure that everyone who wants to continue learning has the ability to,” he said. “We don’t want financial aid to be a barrier for lower income students.”
Let the news come to you
Get any of our free daily email newsletters — news headlines, opinion, e-edition, obituaries and more.
Send us your thoughts and feedback as a letter to the editor. Submit by email, by post to 2820 W. College St., Bozeman, MT 59718 or use our online form.
Support quality local journalism. Become a subscriber.
Subscribers get full, survey-free access to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle's award-winning coverage both on our website and in our e-edition, a digital replica of the print edition.
