Sarah Spreitzer: Hello and welcome to dotEDU. I’m Sarah Spreitzer and I’m joined today with my favorite co-host, Mushtaq Gunja. Hi, Mushtaq.
Mushtaq Gunja: Hi, Sarah. You’re my favorite co-host. And I’m happy to be here on this otherwise very sad week for higher education.
Sarah Spreitzer: In a little bit, we are going to listen to an interview that my other co-host, Jon Fansmith, and myself had with Jeremy Singer, who is the president of the College Board. But he was formerly the FAFSA executive advisor at the office of Federal Student Aid in the Biden administration, or at the end of the Biden administration. And Jon and I had a really great conversation with Jeremy talking about some of the ways in which the FAFSA rollout or the updated FAFSA rollout was a little rocky and how they got back on track.
But before we do that, Mushtaq, this week, we’ve seen a lot of action happening at the Trump Department of Education. We’ve been waiting for an executive order to come out that would have directed the government to start dismantling the Department of Education, or at least the pieces that they could through executive authority. That did not happen. But instead, just yesterday, we saw about half of the Department of Education staff laid off or terminated as a reduction in force or an RIF action by the secretary. You used to work at the U.S. Department of Education. What are your thoughts?
Mushtaq Gunja: It’s a sad day for higher education. It’s a sad day for education. It’s a sad day for all the good people who have been working, in many instances, for decades, faithfully trying to execute the law. And priorities in Republican administrations and Democratic administrations alike. It’s a very sad day.
This news broke less than 24 hours ago. I think we’re still trying to get our arms around exactly who and what... It’s funny, I was reading a Politico article this morning that quoted Linda McMahon, quote, “We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people to make sure that the outward facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met.” And I chuckle a little bit, Sarah. I mean, Linda McMahon was sworn in five-
Sarah Spreitzer: Last week.
Mushtaq Gunja: I mean, it’s pretty quick work to be able to know that you’ve kept all the right people and have done all of this in the most scalpel-like way to make sure that you’re going to be able to execute against all of the administration priorities and the statutory requirements. So I don’t know, think we’re going to have to sort through all of this, make sure that everything is left and make sure that the things that are left are going to be able to be executed correctly. The department has said the right things. Secretary McMahon has said the right things about the FSA programs continuing to be administered, Pell Grants not being cut, all of that. But man, it’s going to be really hard to do it when you’ve cut 50 percent of your staff.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah. I know Senator Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, last night said that he’d been appraised of the actions that they were taking and that he felt assured that services wouldn’t be interrupted for individuals. But looking at the offices that were cut, we’ve seen large cuts at the Institute for Education Sciences, IES, they’re the ones that are taking in all of the data on K-12, but also on postsecondary education. Big cuts at the Office of Educational Technology, OET.
Also big cuts in the Office of Civil Rights, which is interesting because just last week we saw, or actually earlier this week, we saw the letter go out saying that 60 institutions were being targeted for investigations regarding antisemitism. So doing away with your OCR regional offices I think is a big move when you’ve said that you’re going to look at the backlog of Title VI cases.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, no, all of that is correct. It appears at least from the initial reporting that those offices have been majorly cut. I mean, the research arm has been basically decimated, if the reports are correct. It wasn’t a large office, about 100 people, and most of them, almost all of them, have been fired, it appears. Yes, as you said, big cuts at OCR. And then also large numbers at FSA. I mean the Federal Student Aid workforce actually makes up the bulk of the people who work at the Department of Education. And hundreds of people, it appears, have been let go there, as well. So, no, major cuts throughout the organization. Sarah, what do you think this is going to mean for institutions of higher education? I know it’s very early. Initial read. And what else are you hearing?
Sarah Spreitzer: I am very worried about our financial aid officers who package aid for our students and whether or not they’re going to be able to get their questions answered in a timely manner. I know there’s already questions about income-based repayment from student borrowers, because the Trump administration has taken actions to pause that. Questions about PSLF, because we just saw an executive order come out. So who’s going to be answering the phones at FSA?
And part of this all goes into President Trump’s goal to eliminate the Department of Education. And I think that’s always been our concern. Even if you take the loan programs and, as a way to dismantle the department, you move them over to Treasury, are you going to have the same level of service or the same kind of expectations or understanding of how our institutions or even our student borrowers operate unless you’re dealing with the Department of Education. So I think it’s too early to tell, but I think it is very concerning.
And you said at the beginning, Mushtaq, that Secretary McMahon said that they had done this in a thoughtful manner. I think we are seeing this shift now from DOGE, being led by Elon Musk, where they were making these very broad reductions in staff, really looking at probationary employees across the federal government. And we’re now shifting to where President Trump has empowered the cabinet secretaries, like Secretary McMahon, to start making these types of decisions. And I think DOGE is still influencing that. In fact, Secretary McMahon said that they had feedback from DOGE in making these cuts. But it’s clear that the reductions are not going to suddenly stop, that they are still ongoing.
Mushtaq Gunja: Well, I definitely think that’s right. I mean, not just at the department potentially but certainly at other agencies. But it’s very, very difficult for me to believe that Secretary McMahon got sworn in a few days ago and is the one who was behind firing 1,500 people. I mean, this work has been ongoing for six weeks. I mean, this has DOGE written all over it. So yes, maybe they waited until she came on board. But it’s unthinkable that a secretary would be able to wrap their arms around every part of the Department of Education and then only kept all the right people, as she said. I mean, just not really possible, I don’t think.
So we’ll have to see how this all shakes out when we have final data about exactly who and how, which regional offices at FSA and OCR have been closed, what the department tells us over the next couple of days. And luckily, we have a place to do that, because I think we have a dotEDU Live that is coming up in just a couple of days. And Sarah, how can people register for that?
Sarah Spreitzer: Good question. Mushtaq. You can go to www.acenet.edu/podcast. And there should be a registration link for that webinar, which we then turn into a podcast, right at the top of that page. And that’s next Tuesday, March 18th. And I think we’ll be talking a lot about some of the actions the Department of Education has taken, also whether there will still be an executive order around the Department of Education. And I’m sure there will be lots of other things to talk about on Tuesday too.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, goodness, I mean the other administration actions that have been taken as it relates to some of the funding cuts at Columbia and Johns Hopkins and the University of Maine System and some of the immigration actions that might be coming. Goodness, we may or may not have a shutdown-
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah.
Mushtaq Gunja: Normally we’d lead with that, but these days, I mean, there’s just so much to talk about. So please register. And if you do, you’ll have an opportunity to be able to submit questions in advance. We always look at them. It helps guide the conversation. So please do register.
Sarah Spreitzer: And in the meantime, kick back and listen to our conversation with Jeremy Singer, and think back to the good old days when we only had the FAFSA rollout to worry about at the Department of Education.
Jon Fansmith: We are joined by Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board. Jeremy, welcome to dotEDU.
Jeremy Singer: Thank you. Excited to be here.
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, we are very excited to have you here, and especially because you have a very unique insider’s perspective on one of the things that, frankly, I’ll say we have heard the most about from members over the last couple years, something that’s very much has been a huge priority, huge area of focus for ACE but especially at the institutional level, which is the FAFSA simplification implementation. And I don’t know, Jeremy, I think I might call it the wild roller coaster ride of FAFSA simplification.
Jeremy Singer: Fair, fair, fair.
Jon Fansmith: And you have this unique perspective. As I mentioned at the top, you are not an FSA employee. You are at the College Board. How did you possibly get involved in all of this?
Jeremy Singer: So it’s a great story. I was working hard at College Board back in May. We were well aware of the challenges that FAFSA had experienced prior. And I got a call from some people in the administration who asked if I would come and help try to both fix it for this past fall but also set it on more steady ground. And they were attracted to me in part because my extensive experience in education technology and specifically leading a lot of very large software launches.
So I got the call; my first reaction was, “No way.” So I was quite busy here at the College Board. I was also busy with life and wasn’t ready to just sort of pack up and move to DC for six or seven months.
But it quickly became evident that this is something not only that I should do but I really had to do. As we all know and your members know, FAFSA’s such a critical tool in society. It helps make higher education affordable for millions of students. It’s a key for upward mobility. In addition, from the College Board standpoint, we connect students to college success and opportunity, and the biggest challenge that students had last year was really about affordability and understanding the cost of college and making good decisions because they were blind to that because of the challenges with FAFSA.
College Board is also a membership organization, so our members are often the same as ACE members, of some higher ed institutions. And their biggest frustration last year, or challenge, was not being able to provide financial aid offers on the basis and timeliness that they usually do. So when that all sort of permeated, it became very clear from our board, from our members that this is something that not only I should do but I dragged along our chief information officer, brilliant colleague, Jeff Olson.
Jon Fansmith: And it probably doesn’t need repeating for our listeners, but when you stepped in, this was June of 2024, we had been through the first cycle of the new FAFSA. And the very quick recap, the form didn’t go live until December 30th of that year. So well past the usual October 1st launch. And safe to say, lots of problems right from the get-go, crashing, limitations on data, problems various types of applicants were experiencing. A lot of effort put in by FSA to address those challenges. But you stepped in in a moment where the health and well-being of the product was very much in doubt. So what did you find when you came on board?
Jeremy Singer: So when we first arrived in June, and you well know this, your members know this, so much of the focus was still on features and fixing bugs for the current year. And frankly, very little, if anything, had been done to plan for the coming year. So we didn’t realize that; I guess I didn’t do proper due diligence.
It’s a complex project. This software, a lay person could say, “Hey, it’s a form you put online.” It’s a lot more complex than that. The system interacts with a ton of other systems in the government to pull data and send data. It has to be done correctly. So I think they were struggling.
A big part of it was, there’s a lot of reasons that we can go into, but a big part was they had four different vendors that were all part of this project. Those vendors had not been set up to work well together, nor incented to work well together. There was problems with the original legislation and how it required the rollout to go. And then there was problems with the lack of certain skillsets in FSA and the department. And I want to be clear, there are incredibly talented people both at FSA and at the department, but they hadn’t managed a software project of this scope and scale before. It was really a large project, probably the biggest one in Ed’s history and they just didn’t have the tools to lead it well.
Sarah Spreitzer: So Jeremy, you mentioned the legislation that required a lot of these changes. You know, I blame that on Jon because that’s in his legislative portfolio. So we’ll just put that to the side for now. But we were talking before we started this recording. I mean, I remember filling out the FAFSA years and years ago and having all those pages, and it was only in paper; it wasn’t online. And I remember my family, we had to submit our taxes before we were able to fill out the FAFSA. So what did change? What was the big change? And was the scale so much larger because so many people are applying through the FAFSA?
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a scale issue. And I want to come back to some of the physical form to online that happened prior, but some interesting piece.
But the primary answer to your question is there was a real effort to simplify the form, and they were successful in that. The legislation was very clear. And it was bipartisan legislation, o one of the rare things in the two bills that passed in ‘19 and ‘20. And specifically you know this, as College Board we knew this, every year there is a million or more students that were eligible for federal aid but that did not complete the FAFSA. And it was just viewed as too laborious, too complex to do.
So the legislators saw this and said, “We need to simplify it.” And they did. They drastically reduced the number of questions and simplified many parts of it. The biggest simplifying factor was no longer did you have to figure out what of your tax information did you have to put into what field, which sounds easy but turns out to be quite complex. Instead, the breakthrough was they were going to pull the tax data directly from the IRS system. So that was the biggest simplifying of the many things. And I would say that is a real breakthrough and that does make it much easier to complete.
The problem with that is in the past you used to have the family and the student were essentially one unit, so they would complete the FAFSA. So when you did this with your mom, you were completing it together and you submitted a form, a single form. Now you had to have the student create an account and submit some information. They had to then invite a contributor, unless they were an independent. They had to invite a contributor, sometimes two contributors, so depending on their family situation. And then each of those contributors, who were typically parents but not always, would have to then go to studentaid.org and create an account and start an account. And then those accounts had to be linked. So sounds easy. All that was quite complex. And that was the biggest issue in year one was the account creation and linking of accounts between the student and the contributors.
So this is often true with software, when you make some innovation, there are some repercussions or unintended consequences of that innovation. And that was an example that had really stymied the system and they hadn’t thought about that added complexity. But it’s just one example. It’s probably the best example, but one of the many examples where it did get simplified, but it introduced some other versions of complexity.
Jon Fansmith: And Jeremy, you mentioned, talking about this complexity, one of the things were multiple vendors involved in the project when you joined. And certainly we’ve seen some of the media accounts that attempted to kind of do a postmortem of what was happening, where the problems were occurring, and often the relationship with the vendors was cited. Can you shed a little light on when you came on board, what you were seeing in terms of what that relationship looked like? Are there certain limitations to being a federal contractor that made this more of a challenge, or is it kind of a unique situation? Because certainly federal government employs contractors for a huge range of issues.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, so first of all I should say these kind of massive software projects in the private sector and the public sector, wherever, are often fraught and challenging. So it’s not unique to government. I would say, I wish I had a good answer or recommendation for government because there are three schools of thoughts around how do you develop world-class or high-quality software.
So one is you do it yourself. And so the government has not shown an example, we could find very few examples where they’ve hired a large number of very capable software developers and managed to produce software directly from the government. That’s a challenge.
The second challenge is you pick a single vendor. Why that’s nice is you have one vendor, you have someone that’s accountable. The downside of that is that vendor ultimately can a little bit hold you hostage because you have no choices. Once they build it, they own the software, you probably don’t know it well enough. And so if you try to ever get rid of them or go somewhere else, it’s not easy.
So one of the things that has happened in the last number of years, and it’s well principled, is, “Hey, bring in multiple vendors,” so you can sort of keep them competing and challenge and so forth. So they brought in four vendors to solve this. The problem is there was not the right incentives to work together. They had different tools. I mean we had even, I won’t get too technical, but like in the actual releasing of the software, they were using very different tools. So they were emailing and texting release notes back and forth between the vendors, which is just nuts as what we were doing. So we got there and we saw this very disconnected.
The last thing I’ll say is, no matter which of those models you pick, you need people on staff who are technically sophisticated and can manage those vendors. And so one of the issues, I’ll probably get into it more, that the FSA and Ed team faced is they didn’t have great visibility into where the vendors were. So my hypothesis, I wasn’t there, but in the summer of 2023, I don’t think they knew how far behind the vendors were at that point in time. So you really need very capable, experienced people who’ve managed large software projects, even if you are using vendors. And they did not have enough of that talent. And that’s part of what we brought to the table when we joined.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jeremy, you mentioned how far behind the vendors were. What we started seeing was a lot of delays and a lot of problems showing up, I think at the start of 2024. And then we were looking for October for the new FAFSA to be released and for schools to start getting ISIRs and information to be uploaded. It seems to be going a bit better this year. What were the changes that you think happened? Or is it just because we had that horrible first year and all the kinks are now worked out?
Jeremy Singer: So I hope it’s better than your characterization, a little bit better. I would argue that FAFSA is working well. And I think the vision that Congress had of simplifying the form has been realized for the vast majority of students. And in no way am I saying is the software perfect and is there work to be done, and we can get into that. But I think it’s radically different this year than last.
I’ll tell you what, we had a fairly straightforward view of the problem when we got there. First, and this is not new to anyone who’s been involved in software, you need a manageable scope and schedule, something that’s achievable. And time and time again during that project, the dates that were set or the scope that was set was not possible. So the teams that were working on it were working on it but knew they were going to miss it or knew they couldn’t deliver it without massive bugs. And the students and your members faced the repercussions of that. But that was a big piece is, what is a reasonable timeline that can be made and what is the scope that can be managed?
Second thing we did was dramatically increase the amount of testing. So they did some user acceptance testing, which is good practice, but there was a whole myriad of other forms of testing that would identify and find and enable us to fix bugs or issues before it went to millions of users, which they weren’t adequately capturing. And this included the beta period that we introduced.
The third was, I don’t think everyone realized the extent of the ecosystem needed to successfully support students and families completing the FAFSA. So it’s not just the federal government. It is your members, the financial aid administrators at higher ed institutions are real heroes here, the staff of community-based organizations, the high school counselors. Like the amount of work and passion these people do to help students and families navigate the form and understand it is immense. And unfortunately, when we got there, it was more those two forces were at war, the government and those groups. And we were in a mission to do the opposite, to equip all of those well-intentioned people that are part of the ecosystem to actually be able to maximize their contribution.
And then the fourth thing we did, it’s related, was a real effort to increase trust through transparency. Much of that had been lost because of the craziness of year one. And we dubbed it internally as called working in public. We wanted to be much more open and I think we made progress there, including with your organization and obviously with your members.
Jon Fansmith: And can I pick up on that a little bit more too? Because I think one of those things, and I’d like you to dig a little bit deeper into that idea of working in public and rebuilding the trust and transparency. I think a lot of the frustration certainly we heard from college presidents and financial aid administrators, and absolutely agree with your characterization, doing unbelievable work, long hours, extra days, things to serve the students, to try to work around where they’re finding the challenges. But the biggest frustration we were hearing from them was they just didn’t know about the problem until the problem was happening and they did not necessarily feel well prepared. And obviously, some of these things were unanticipated. If they had been known, I think FSA would have been working in that way.
But I think I remember a press account of an early public appearance you gave when you stepped into the role. Some obscenities maybe were dropped in a public forum or something like that. It was a little bit livelier and less scripted-seeming than you’re used to communications from FSA. Talk a little bit about what that looked like, how you start to try to rebuild trust at a really frayed moment in the relationship between colleges and the department.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, so I don’t remember that particular incident, but there’s probably many of them. I do have a habit of using very lively language. So I had a great benefit because at College Board for the last 12 years I’ve been working with... Our members are the same members as ACE, as well as more, we have 6,000 members. So even more complex in some ways than your membership. So I had relationships, and I saw them as an incredible asset. So I was calling the associations, I was calling FAAs, I was calling college presidents that I knew, I was calling heads of CBOs, I was calling superintendents and high school counselors. And my team was as well. And so we had to leverage that expertise.
So I would say it was gradual, and you’re probably a better judge of how successful we were. There is naturally some reticence within government to be transparent or be open. And I think some of that, and I don’t think it’s one party or the other, I think it’s both parties aren’t great at that, and sometimes for some good reasons. So at times things can be weaponized, things people say can be weaponized. So if you admit anything but everything’s going great, someone will take that and use that against you. And so there’s this incentive to say, “Everything’s going well, we’re on schedule, we’re going to be back.” And we felt that obviously, we had heard and there were so many people frustrated with that, that we tried to be more direct, more transparent. And it was a gradual thing.
I mean, I remember I was on a weekly call with the House and the first weeks what I could say was very constrained. “You can’t show this slide, you can’t do that.” And gradually, as we shared more and the people we were sharing with didn’t weaponize it and received it well, they gave us more room to do that. And we did the same with a lot of the associations and others. So a lot of work went there.
Now, I will say I was on one of those House calls, this is a short story, and we were talking about beta and Jeff Olson, my colleague, was explaining why we do beta, the value of doing beta. And it was part of like, “Hey, we’re going to launch beta on October 1st and it’s going to be a later date when we open to 17 million, and here’s all the reasons.” And this person who could be a critic said, “That’s genius. We should put that into all legislation, like beta should be part of all legislation.” So we left that call like, “Great, even this person who’s usually quite hard on us was positive.” And then later that day, the person that worked for a senator tweets it out, like, “FAFSA again way behind,” something critical of beta. And we’re like, “Ah.” So we did face it occasionally.
But generally, the greater the transparency, we earned trust back over time. And I hope that’s continuing. From what I can see, I’m not involved internally, I think that the team there is still trying to continue that approach.
Jon Fansmith: And let me just pick at that thread a little bit more too, because obviously we care a lot about politics here, given what Sarah and I do for a living. This became a very political process in a way that I think especially as we tend to think about FAFSA, we tend to think of it’s more of a process issue than a politics issue. But it became a feature a lot of attention of criticisms of the Biden administration or even some of the internal politics about hitting timelines and what does that mean and fulfilling the promises of the FAFSA Simplification Act.
When you came on board, were you feeling these different currents? You mentioned certainly the regular discussions with policymakers on the Hill. Was there a lot of connection within hearing from the White House about timeframes or other things? Does that make it easier in some ways, give you clarity as to what the goals are or harder to navigate because there’s lots of crosscurrents in the space?
Jeremy Singer: I would strongly say the latter. So yeah, there was a lot-
Jon Fansmith: It’s a leading question.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, yeah. Well done. There was a lot of pressure, particularly after what happened year one, to deliver on year two and improve it. And in fact, originally there was a lot of commitment to October 1st. And that wasn’t only from the White House and the Department of Ed, but it was from the community, including ACE wrote a letter in June saying, “Hey, you got to hit October 1st.”
And I get there and I’m like, “There’s no way.” I mean we can say it, but if we try to go for October 1st, we’re going to replay what happened the prior year. At best, we launch submissions, which is just what the student and family does. We wouldn’t be able to process and create ISIRs, which is what we deliver to colleges, well until 2025, probably about right now. And we probably would have found issues in submissions only when we created the ISIRs now that would have required, like happened year one, millions of students to have to redo the form.
So it was nuts. I tried to explain the concept of people just think, “Just throw more resources, more money, more people.” And I’m like, in software, there’s a phrase that two moms can’t make a baby in four and a half months. And it’s true at times with software. I don’t want to always use this excuse, but... And that was the situation. So I think there were a lot of pressures and unrealistic pieces. And we had to work quite hard to convince all the parties, external and internal, about a reasonable scope, a reasonable schedule.
And I think that was the biggest thing on my plate. Jeff Olson was leading the actual development work, and it was by far the hardest part of the project, outside of the actual technical work, was getting that kind of buy-in and acceptance. And eventually it did. There was a letter in July from a lot of CBOs and some higher ed associations basically saying, “The earlier the better. So we’re not saying that’s not important, but it’s also important that you deliver software that’s working and that you delivered on dates that are predictable.” And that got us to the schedule that we actually were able to successfully deliver on.
Sarah Spreitzer: So I have a question for both of you, Jeremy, because you obviously followed this very closely, Jon, because I know you do too. Did we see an impact on enrollments? I know I’ve seen differing reports saying that we saw a decline in people applying through the FAFSA for financial aid. Then I’ve seen reports that we actually grew our enrollments for the 2024-2025 academic year. What happened? What was the result of this FAFSA rollout?
Jeremy Singer: Thanks, Sarah. So we don’t fully know. Let me give you my hypothesis and then, Jon, we’ll do point-counterpoint here.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, that would be good.
Jeremy Singer: So first of all, I think all of us know enrollments can fluctuate year to year. They do fluctuate from year to year. And there’s a lot of reasons, and this is why it’s a tough job leading a higher ed institution. One of the many reasons why it’s tough. Things like the economy, a better economy fewer students apply. The perception of higher ed continues to evolve, and depending on that perception, the ROI of college continues to change or the perception at least changes. So all these affect how many students apply and go to college. Clearly FAFSA, the ability to know what the cost will be and what kind of aid we’ll get would be another factor to move in the mix.
So one thing we do know, Sarah, was that completion of FAFSA by high school seniors was down significantly. The overall number ended up being down year over year less, but year over year, the high school seniors was down significantly. But we don’t know that connection to the actual attendance. So when National Student Clearinghouse earlier in the fall came out with what turns out to be erroneous data, but they came out saying enrollments are down 5 percent. And so it stood to reason that one of the factors would be the prior year FAFSA, not as many students could complete the FAFSA, therefore that’s the connection. And it’s a bit of confirmation bias in my opinion. But that is right. So then a couple of weeks ago, National Student Clearinghouse came back out and said, “Whoops, we made a mistake.” Instead of being down 5 percent, as you know, it’s up 5 percent, high school enrollment.
So here I want to give some credit, so I don’t know the answer, but I want to give credit to the FSA and the Department of Ed. And this was all done before I was there, so I’m not trying to take any credit myself. But when they saw the year over year decline in completions of FAFSA, they went very aggressive to try to work with orgs to make that up. And then financial aid administrators at your institutions, CBOs, high schools, they did incredible work trying to track down the students who traditionally would have completed the FAFSA but didn’t to try to help them to get it to do it. So anyone who had interest in college, they wanted to do it.
So ultimately, there was still a large year over year gap. But my hypothesis, and Jon, get ready, you can do your counterpoint in a sec, but my hypothesis here is a lot of those students were students who were never going to apply or attend college. So a lot of states have required everyone has to complete the FAFSA. And those states, those students fill it out in December and January. Well, if the form wasn’t available, those students who would have filled it out don’t fill it out. But that’s half the students were never going to apply. So I don’t think we ever caught up with those students, but I do think they did catch up with a lot of the other students. And so I don’t know, but I’m skeptical when a college says, “My enrollments are down because of FAFSA” when the overall number’s up 5 percent. But Jon, what do you think?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don’t know that I disagree that much with you. I think a couple of things I would highlight that I thought were really interesting throughout this. We were very much convinced of this narrative, and you saw the data, the GAO report about a 9 percent decline in high school applications, right? And then the Clearinghouse data seemed to say, “Yeah, this is the likely impact of what we know to be true,” right? And in fact, Clearinghouse, to their credit, when they announced that they were correcting the data said, “In some ways it never raised any flags for us because we were operating in this environment, we assumed enrollments would decline as a result of the problems of the FAFSA.” So it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that regard.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, exactly.
Jon Fansmith: I’ll also say, I really actually appreciate the way you talked about the financial aid administrators, the college admissions counselors, the enrollments folks. In some ways this was one of the finer moments in higher ed. These people really stepped up in an environment where had the same level of effort carried forward, we would have probably seen enrollment declines. And the fact that we haven’t, that we’ve seen growth, actually, I think speaks to the fact that this redoubled effort in many ways maybe reached some students who wouldn’t have considered, they were getting a level of direct attention and care, maybe more effort and attention to the possibility of college for them. Which, you know, this is my crazy untestable theory, right?
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, yeah, no, I’m agreeing. What I do know, what I don’t think is a theory is that the financial aid administrators and admissions officers did heroic work. They had to do more work because of the issues, and they had a lot on their plate. And I think they did incredible work. And there’s a lot of people in the ecosystem that really stepped up. The CBOs did incredible work, a lot of people on the high school level, that really made a difference. And so it is heartening. So I couldn’t have been happier when I saw the new data come out because I think you’re right. I think there’s no question that they did an incredible amount of work and some of that had to have an impact.
Jon Fansmith: So we actually mostly agree I think here, Jeremy.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh man.
Jon Fansmith: Sorry, Sarah.
Sarah Spreitzer: I really wanted stronger debate there, guys.
Jon Fansmith: Well, Jeremy, we have taken up a lot of your time and I want to be thoughtful about it, but where I started was you have this really unique perch to this process that’s been so central to all of higher ed over the last two years or so. Before we let you go, final thoughts, things you’d do differently, things we should be paying attention to, your outlook for the future of FSA and the FAFSA. Floor is yours; what haven’t we asked?
Jeremy Singer: This is a great topic and we could probably talk for a long time, but I appreciate the opportunity. I’ll try to do it in two parts. So first, I have a plea to you guys and your members. I think what happened with FAFSA of having a really challenging year one and then a much better year two, that kind of arc is not unusual in government when you launch software. The first year is often challenging, maybe not quite as challenging as HealthCare.gov or the FAFSA, but it’s often challenging and then it gets better. And it is significantly better. And I do, again, think we’re meeting the vision of a simplified FAFSA for the vast majority.
But it still can be better. And what happens in government is once people had such a bad first year and there’s so much PTSD, that once it works pretty well, they sort of freeze and that they don’t demand that it gets even better. And when you try to improve things, you have some risks, so everybody gets very conservative. And I think that’s a shame because it can be even easier for students and families. There’s stuff they’re working on now that I think will do that, but there’s more there. It’s also for financial aid administrators. Like we spent time at a lot of colleges watching them process ISIRs, and there’s a lot of workarounds or things that could be a lot easier. And those people are so patient. So anyway, so the point is we need to keep the pressure on to continue to improve and not just to stop where it’s at.
And I also think I ask you and your members to be very measured in what you ask and make sure you understand any unintended consequences. I don’t want to belabor it. But requiring just a date without thinking of the repercussions, if that date’s not possible, could have led to a real disastrous situation. So you do wield real power and you need to be smart on using it. I have one big idea that I should share, and it is I think there are real improvements that can happen.
So Sarah, you talked about the paper form earlier, and there’s something in software called skeuomorphism where you build off the past even though you don’t need to. So electric cars where the charger is is often where the gas tank was. That’s just because people are used to it. It’s not because that’s the optimized place. So the skeuomorphic part of FAFSA is from the paper is people fill it out online and then they get some feedback like a day, two days later of whether there’s issues versus it real-time being processed and giving feedback in real time. That’s just a terrible... That can be fixed. And if you could give time in real time, “Hey, re-enter this,” or, “This isn’t working, can you...” It would dramatically reduce some of the confusion. So I really want us to push for things like that. And I think those things are available.
I’ll say overall, the project, it was an honor to be on that project. I had an amazing team that came with me, as I mentioned his name, Jeff Olson, he’s the CIO of College Board, but he was the true MVP of the project. I brought in a fantastic team, a woman, Adi Rosman, James Kwok, Aaron Lemon-Strauss, Megan McGuire, and Scott Keller. They all dropped their lives and came to work 90-hour weeks. It was also wonderful to work with the FSA and the team from the department. They were initially incredibly skeptical of us, so it took a lot of warming. But by the end, I thought we were really working as one team and had a lot of success.
And then I actually want to thank you, ACE, but also your members and the larger ecosystem that I mentioned. The most rewarding part of the work from my heart is that these groups all of rallied together, and it was most evident in the beta work where we had more than 70 organizations helping pull off the betas. And that was so critical. We found and fixed 80 bugs that we addressed before we launched to 17 million people. And if it was the reverse, it would have been a nightmare. So thank you. Thank you for your leadership here. Thank you for your members. And I’m glad we got to where we got to.
Jon Fansmith: Let me return that right back to you. Thank you so much, not just for coming on here today and talking with us and sharing a lot of insight into the process and the challenges, but thank you for everything you and Jeff and the team from College Board and at FSA you did to get this resolved for institutions so we’re in the much better place we find ourselves now. Greatly appreciated. And thanks again for joining us as well.
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