U.S Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Gov. Ned Lamont both said Tuesday that the new federal financial aid form will bring college application rates back up and give more students access to higher education.
Cardona and Lamont also commended the state second chance Pell Grant system at a roundtable at Connecticut State Community College, Middlesex in Middletown.
In the wake of delays for college students that have had to wait in order to apply for federal financial aid, Cardona – who was flanked by Lamont – said that fixing the system will be a work in progress. They agreed that changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly known as FAFSA, was a step forward.
“When the president hired me, he said: ‘Fix a broken system.’ We had a million people going into default every year. We had over 600,000 people that didn’t have access to higher education because we had a FAFSA system that’s older than me. We’re fixing it. It’s hard work. We’re going get it right.”
Colleges and universities began receiving student information last month that had been backed up for months while the system was being overhauled with changes stemming from the FAFSA Simplification Act.
Cardona said that because of the changes to FAFSA, 600,000 new individuals now have access to Pell Grants. Additionally, he said the new form is much easier and simpler to fill out and only takes 15-20 minutes.
Still, he said that more needs to be done.
“I’m not satisfied with 60 percent of our students filling out FAFSA,” Cardona said. “That’s unacceptable, we shouldn’t be happy with that. We should have a sense of urgency in getting those numbers up.” He urged students to continue to apply.
Cardona, the former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Education said that the delays have largely subsided, and that the information of students who fill out the form now will be available to the colleges they listed within a few days.
Cardona said that thousands of students that have eligibility now that didn’t before, and that the department is committed to giving students what they need to succeed. That sentiment was echoed by the governor.
“The FAFSA program’s incredibly important, and we’re getting it right,” Lamont said. “If there’s been a 30 day delay, so be it. We got it right, now take advantage of it.”
The amount of federal aid that can currently be received from a FAFSA Pell Grant is $7,395, and Cardona said he is hopeful that that number can be raised to over $8,000 this year. Increasing the benefits, he said, will expand the availability of higher education to more people.
“In this country, higher education should be for those who want to continue to learn, not for those born into wealth,” Cardona said.
He said there is currently no requirement for school districts to reach out to their students about filling out the FAFSA form, but that the entire system could work better in terms of getting students to apply.
“Everyone’s on board with this. Everyone understands the benefit of it,” he said. “We just have to do what we’ve done, which is: collaborate intentionally to make sure we raise the bar, have more students fill that out, and have more students have access to higher education.”
Connecticut, Cardona said, has the highest FAFSA completion rate in the country.
Cardona and Lamont also commended the second chance Pell Grant system for incarcerated students, which they said is a vital part of the higher education and labor system in Connecticut.
Brian Sullivan Sr. Is a former student under the second chance Pell grant, and said that his experience and education while being incarcerated helped him turn his life around.
“I knew I was more than what I did,” Sullivan said. “I knew I was better than that and I knew that’s not where I wanted to be or where I wanted my life to end up.”
Sullivan now works with the ACLU in advocating for incarcerated individuals.
Seeing the success of the 9 facilities in the state that offer classes to incarcerated students, Cardona said he was impressed.
“It reinforces some of the things that we’re doing, but also reminds me that we have to do a better job across the country at making them accessible to more.”
Lamont said that the impact of the program is not just teaching math, but giving incarcerated individuals some direction and control over their lives again.
“What a difference it makes,” he said. “I particularly love people getting that second chance.”
Recidivism and crime, Lamont said, are down because of increases in educational access.
