ICYMI: Stefanik Questions GAO on Failure of Biden-Harris Admin to Streamline FAFSA Process and Provide Tuition Relief to Students and Families
Interview
"The Biden-Harris Department of Education FAFSA disaster has harmed students and families, in many cases irreparably, across the country. We’ve spoken, my office has spoken with many families in Northern New York. They are concerned about the fallout and downstream ripple effects of the FAFSA delay, including talking with parents worrying that their child’s scholarship will be revoked as they try to afford college. This is on top of the historic inflation crisis that is painful for families with an average median income in my district of about forty-five to fifty thousand dollars and we know this problem was avoidable, and this misstep has led to the largest decline in applications coming from low-income students, in some cases, removing the opportunity for those kids to go to college. So, I want to focus on the GAO investigation, and just to verify some of the findings here. While the department claimed that it took an average fifteen to twenty minutes to fill out the FAFSA application, the investigation found that it took a two-parent household an average of nine and a half days to complete. Is that correct?"
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"Nine and a half days. Nearly three quarters of calls to the department’s call center went unanswered in the first five months of the rollout. Is that correct?"
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"And the department inexplicably cut its call center staff compared to the previous year and they, in fact, ended up receiving twice as many total calls. Is that correct?"
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"The department also refused to provide students information on the status of their applications or solutions to technical problems for months telling many to just ‘Try again later.’ Is that correct?"
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"This obviously is very, very frustrating for families. My question is: what students and families were hurt the most by these FAFSA delays?"
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