Troubling financial aid trend suggests COVID-19 dashed Fort Worth kids’ college hopes
The Fort Worth school district has seen a sharp decline in student applications for federal financial aid, a trend education researchers say could indicate the COVID-19 pandemic has derailed the college plans of many high school seniors.
School districts across Texas and nationwide have seen declines in financial aid applications. But the picture in the Fort Worth school district is more stark. By Nov. 6, the number of Fort Worth seniors who had completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, was down by 44.1% compared to the same time last year, according to a compilation of federal data by the nonprofit National College Attainment Network. Fort Worth schools saw the largest decline of the 11 districts the Texas Education Agency classifies as major urban districts.
Completing the FAFSA form is a major milestone in the college admissions process, and education researchers say a decline in the number of students who fill out the application likely means fewer seniors plan to go to college in the fall. Fort Worth district officials say they’re finding new ways to reach students when in-person college counseling sessions aren’t possible, moving advising visits and informational events online. And state officials are rolling out an automated text messaging service designed to help students get information about college applications and financial aid.
But even students who are determined not to let the pandemic disrupt their plans say it’s difficult to navigate the college application process without in-person, hands-on support from school counselors.
“We don’t know what to do,” said Joceline Rojas, a senior at Fort Worth’s Marine Creek Collegiate High School. “This is all new information for us.”
Last March, Rojas’ college readiness class was just beginning to cover the college application process when COVID-19 gained a foothold in North Texas, and the district shut down its schools and moved classes online.
The shutdown put most of those conversations on hold, Rojas said. Every teacher’s attention shifted toward figuring out how to keep students engaged in a remote environment, she said. Before long, it was summer. When online classes began again in September, teachers fussed at students about getting their college applications turned in and financial aid paperwork filled out. But many students at the school, including Rojas, are the first in their families to go to college, so they didn’t have family members who knew how the process worked, she said.
Every part of the process has been harder this year because of the pandemic, she said. The counselors at Marine Creek make themselves available in as many ways as possible to help students with questions about college applications or financial aid paperwork, Rojas said. They make it clear that there’s no such thing as a dumb question and encourage students to contact them online with any issues they have. But juniors and seniors at Marine Creek, which is housed at Tarrant County College’s Northwest campus, haven’t returned to in-person classes. Even though counselors go out of their way to be accommodating, she can’t just drop by their office with a quick question or to ask them to send her transcript to a college.
FAFSA rates drop
The decline in FAFSA completions in Fort Worth is part of a larger trend: nationwide, 16.3% fewer high school seniors had completed the application by Nov. 6 compared to the same time last year. Across Texas, FAFSA completions were down 15.4% on Nov. 6.
Anita Perry, the district’s executive director of collegiate programming and advisement, said she didn’t know of any factors that might drive a sharper decline in Fort Worth than in other major districts across the state. The district’s FAFSA completion numbers were trending up before the pandemic began, Perry said. But when school shutdowns began last spring, the district saw a decline that continued into the beginning of the current school year, she said.
One of the biggest challenges is the FAFSA form itself, Perry said. It’s a complicated form, and most students have a hard time understanding it without help. During a normal year, hands-on support from counselors is an essential part of the process, she said, but that support is harder to give in a virtual environment. Similarly, some parents are wary about giving out the kind of information the form requires, she said. During in-person meetings, counselors can reassure parents and make sure they understand why that information is necessary and how the process works. But those conversations don’t always go as smoothly online, she said.
Perry said there is still time to make up lost ground. District officials and school counselors are at work to find ways to reach students at a time when the normal avenues of communication don’t work.
“I’m still very optimistic,” Perry said. “It’s going to take time.”
Job losses and other financial changes related to the pandemic have also disrupted some students’ college plans, Perry said. When that happens, counselors work with students and their families to find out what options are still possible. Counselors might steer those students toward Tarrant County College as a more affordable option than a four-year university and connect them with scholarship programs that can help them pay for it, she said.
To reach students who can’t meet with counselors in person, the district has moved several of its college prep events online, Perry said. In September and October, the district held virtual college application boot camps and FAFSA completion nights, in which they walked students and their parents through the process of completing college applications, applying for financial aid and figuring out which college would be the best fit for them. District leaders plan to hold more boot camps, in both English and Spanish, in the spring.
Online financial aid nights work
It’s a model that has worked well elsewhere. In Broward County, Florida, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, counselors began a series of online FAFSA completion nights after seeing financial aid applications decline for the class of 2020.
For years, the district held FAFSA completion events at churches and other public locations around the county, which includes Fort Lauderdale and its suburbs. But usually, no more than a handful of parents or students showed up, said Carol Lopez, supervisor of the district’s college, career and life readiness department. The events generally amounted to a lot of wasted effort, she said.
When the pandemic began and the district’s FAFSA completion numbers began to decline, a member of Lopez’s team had the idea to shift the events to an online format. So the district recruited about 85 volunteers, including college admissions and financial aid experts and others who could help coordinate the events. Each completion night took place in a single online conference room, with volunteers waiting in breakout rooms to help students who had specialized questions.
The events were far better attended than any in-person financial aid information night the district had held, Lopez said. At one point, more than 700 people were logged into a single event, she said. Lopez also thinks the events helped shield the district from the severe FAFSA completion declines seen in other districts in Florida and elsewhere. At the end of October, the district’s FAFSA completion numbers were down 8% compared to the same time last year. Florida saw an 18% decline statewide.
Although the district had only planned to hold the events through the end of October, they were so successful that officials decided to extend them, she said. The district is planning a Spanish-language FAFSA completion event in December and similar events in Portuguese and Haitian creole in the next few months. District officials are making plans to continue holding similar events even after the pandemic has ended, she said.
Shedly Casseus, a member of the district’s college and career readiness team, said the primary goal during the events is to make sure volunteers are equipped to answer questions quickly, accurately and courteously. The district also has a team of Microsoft support technicians on standby to help with any problems. Moving in-person events online creates a burden for students and parents, Casseus said, so it’s important to make sure the events go as smoothly as possible to keep from creating more roadblocks.
Declining rates could point to trouble
Texas’ FAFSA completion rate at the end of last month placed it roughly in the middle of the pack nationally, according to the National College Attainment Network. Only Georgia, Hawaii and Puerto Rico had more students fill out the form this year than the same time last year.
“Texas has a lot of company,” said Bill DeBaun, the nonprofit’s director of data and evaluation.
FAFSA completions are a good indicator of college intent. About 90% of students who complete the application enroll in college directly after high school, compared with 55% of students who don’t fill out the form, he said. So a sharp decline in the number of students completing the application is likely a precursor to fewer students going to college, he said.
Low-income and first-generation students make up a disproportionate amount of the declines in FAFSA completion nationwide, DeBaun said. That creates an even bigger problem, because those students have more barriers preventing them from going to college, and once they’ve been knocked off track, it’s more difficult to get them there, he said.
The college and financial aid application processes are complicated, and many of the deadlines and milestones along the way don’t make a lot of sense, DeBaun said. First-generation college students may find the process especially daunting because no one in their families has done it before, he said. Those students are also surrounded by messages from society telling them they aren’t college material, he said. The more they struggle to navigate financial aid and college application paperwork, the likelier they are to take those messages to heart, he said.
The problem this year is that the application has fallen down the priority list for both students and school leaders, DeBaun said. Many students are dealing with food or housing insecurity. Others have struggled with access to the technology they need to do their school work. Still others have gotten sick from COVID-19 or seen family members catch the virus. School districts, too, have scrambled to find ways to keep students in class, either in person or remotely.
States, school districts and individual high schools have a tall task to encourage this year’s seniors to fill out the FAFSA form, DeBaun said. But some states have begun programs to try to reach students remotely, he said. In Illinois, education officials created an online network of recent college graduates who offer advice and mentorship to students who are navigating the college application and financial aid process. In May, the Michigan College Access Network began a free hotline that connects students with college advisers who can answer questions about financial aid.
Texas rolls out AI-powered service
In late October, the Texas Coordinating Board for Higher Education rolled out an artificial intelligence-based tool to help high school seniors with questions about how to apply for financial aid. The program, called ADVi, allows students and parents to get answers to their questions from an automated texting service. When students ask a question ADVi can’t answer, the service directs them to human advisers. State education officials said they hoped the service would help Texas students, particularly those in low-income families and first-generation college students, avoid putting off their college plans because of the pandemic.
The service is similar to tools other states began months ago. Last fall, the Arizona College Access Network launched an artificial intelligence-powered texting service, called Benji. Washington state began a similar service called Otterbot to answer students’ FAFSA questions.
Sarah Weiss, associate director of college access and support for the Washington Student Achievement Council, said the state had struggled for several years to connect with college-bound high school students via email. The council, which is the state agency that oversees higher education and student success, looked for different ways to send students information about college applications and financial aid. After reading research about the effectiveness of using text nudges to reach certain groups of students, the council decided to try it.
Like Texas’ texting service, Otterbot connects students to live advisers if they have questions the artificial intelligence service can’t answer. The automated system can generally handle close to 80% of students’ questions, Weiss said.
The council began the texting service in November 2019. A few weeks after schools shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, the council saw a spike in the number of students and parents texting questions to the service, Weiss said. Those high numbers continued through the summer, she said.
Although the state didn’t plan the texting service with school shutdowns in mind, it’s been an invaluable tool for reaching students who are out of school, Weiss said. Generally, the council does most of its communicating through school counselors. But many students had a harder time connecting with their counselors during shutdowns. Otterbot gave students another way to find help with financial aid paperwork and college applications, and it gave the council an easier way to get information to college-bound students, she said.
Pandemic complicates application process
Gabriela Urbina, a senior at Marine Creek, said she’s had to rethink her choice of college because of the pandemic. She’d planned to go to the University of Texas at El Paso to study biology and eventually to go to medical school. She was excited about the opportunities she’d have for undergraduate research at UTEP.
But after the pandemic began, Urbina and her family decided it made more sense for her to stay in North Texas, at least for a while. Now, Urbina plans to go to Texas Wesleyan University next year. She worries she won’t get a typical college experience due to COVID-19, at least during her freshman year, but Texas Wesleyan is a good school with a strong biology program, she said.
Although Urbina is excited about the idea of starting college next year, she’s had trouble finding her way through the process to get there. Her school’s counselors help, she said, but reaching them is more difficult than before COVID-19 . When she was at school in person, Urbina could stop into their office with questions. Now, she has to schedule Facetime meetings, which sometimes leaves her waiting for answers she needs quickly.
“I don’t know how to do FAFSA,” Urbina said. “I don’t know how to complete a college application. I don’t know the requirements.”
Rojas, also a Marine Creek senior, said she’s determined not to let the pandemic disrupt her college plans. Three of the 15 schools where she applied have accepted her, and she’s waiting for results from the rest. Her dream school is Texas Christian University. Her parents like that choice, too, because it would keep her closer to home.
Making things more complicated is the fact that she’ll be the first member of her family to go to college. Rojas’ father came to Texas from Guatemala and her mother from Mexico. They came to the United States so she’d have the kinds of opportunities that a college education would give her, she said, and she’s determined to make the most of those opportunities. But because they don’t have any experience with college admissions process, her parents have found applications and financial aid paperwork just as daunting as she has, she said. That’s left her to navigate the process largely on her own.
“All this stuff was just thrown to me, and it was new,” she said.
