Iowa colleges see lower federal student aid completion rates

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As Iowa colleges and universities receive the last of the federal student aid applications for the upcoming school year, financial aid officials are seeing fewer students submit their documents and changes in how much those who do file receive.

Iowa’s completion rate of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is on par with the national average, but for individual colleges those numbers are more extreme.

Almost 1.9 million students had filed the FAFSA by June 21, according to the National College Attainment Network , or just over 45% of the total high school class of 2024. This is an 11.8% drop from 2023.

Iowa is firmly in the middle of the pack for rates of FAFSA completion, according to the network, with 43.8% of high school seniors having submitted the form by June 21. The rate of completion dropped by 11.7% from last year, or from 18,493 submitted applications to 16,039.

Luther, Drake see fewer aid submissions

At Luther College in Decorah, financial aid director Rachel Moser said rates of first-year students submitting FAFSAs is 18% behind where it was this time last year, and there’s been a decrease of 15% in continuing students’ FAFSA submissions as well.

Just days before the Iowa FAFSA deadline hit on July 1, Moser said the financial aid department was trying to contact people and encourage them to get their forms filed.

“We always have a group of students that don’t have their FAFSA filed at this point, but this year we’re seeing more than normal,” Moser said.

Drake University Financial Aid Director Ryan Zantingh said his staff was also reaching out to students ahead of the deadline, especially those who might qualify for the Iowa Tuition Grant.

In June 2023, Drake had admitted 4,508 students. Despite seeing an increase in admitted students by more than 1,000 by mid-June this year, which Zantingh said is among the university’s largest-ever admitted student populations, Drake has received 237 fewer FAFSAs from admitted students compared to last year. These admission numbers exclude international students, who do not fill out the FAFSA. He said that in total, the filing rate for admitted students is down around 15% compared to previous years.

“It kind of illustrates the difficulties and impact these FAFSA (changes) have had on schools,” Zantingh said.

New federal form brought glitches, delays

The new FAFSA has given both families and universities grief since its soft launch at the end of 2023, two months later than it rolled out in previous years. Students struggled with accessing the form early on and trying to understand sometimes confusing language and changes to the aid formula and what they needed to include for accurate calculations. Glitches and inaccurate data caused delays in getting forms to schools, many of which then had to be sent back to be corrected.

When Luther College would normally start sending out financial aid offers to prospective students in November, in this FAFSA cycle the university couldn’t begin disseminating information until mid-April. Like many colleges, Luther and Drake were months behind and having to work with a huge time crunch, officials said.

Colleges are still seeing bugs in the system and cannot make batch corrections on FAFSA forms, slowing down the process to get students accurate financial aid information even more.

It’s been hard trying to help families that are struggling to make large financial decisions like where to send their child to college, or whether they should go at all, when the schools themselves don’t have all of the information yet, Moser said.

“I don’t have the answers that they want right now, and I feel for all of the students because without having that financial aid offer in front of you, how do you make a decision,” Moser said. “I mean, families need that information to be able to make an informed decision on where their students are going to go to school, or if their students continue to go to school.”

New form hits families with farms, businesses and multiple kids in college

Changes were also made to the FAFSA to exclude the number of additional family members in college and to include the value of family farms and businesses as assets, impacting the aid some continuing students have been receiving.

Moser said more students are now eligible for Pell Grants or for more funds through their grant because of these changes. But some students are seeing a negative impact on the aid they receive because their siblings who are also in college can no longer be counted in the FAFSA.

Analysis from Iowa College Aid projected that the number of students eligible for Iowa Tuition Grants would increase by a net 2%, with the number becoming eligible going up by 8% and the number no longer eligible going up by 6%, Zantingh said. Most of the students losing eligibility could attribute that to no longer being able to consider other family members in college.

Zantingh said the university plans to analyze the scope of how these changes have affected students, but there just hasn’t been time with everything the financial aid department has had to deal with. He said he hopes discussions around the positive and negative impacts on students, especially with the changes related to family farms and businesses, can be held in future years.

“That’s part of my frustration with how this year went, because we could be talking about whether that was a good policy change or not, but instead, we’re just focused on, can the status quo from this year even be operational on October 1 for the ’25-‘ 26 year,” Zantingh said.

Both financial aid officials said they’re hoping for a smoother time next FAFSA cycle and are expecting the form to be out earlier, as Moser said Federal Student Aid is committed to having it out on Oct. 1.

However, with certain functionalities from the school’s side of things still not available and other issues still not resolved, Zantingh said how next year goes all depends on what can be resolved over the rest of this summer.

“At every turn there seems to be new challenges and new difficulties,” Zantingh said.

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