The percentage of high school students completing their federal financial aid applications in Texas has dropped from last year.
This is partly because of the poor initial rollout of the new abbreviated Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA forms, Commissioner of Higher Education Harrison Keller said in a phone interview.
People were unable to sign in or were kicked out of the system.
Competing the FAFSA form is a graduation requirement.
“They have to fill out a FAFSA or TAFSA or fill out a waiver. Last year, we had like 75 percent of the students who completed FAFSA or TAFSA were already submitted a waiver by this point. Of graduating high school seniors this year it’s more like 40 percent,” Keller said.
He said he thinks part of what happened was there were some technical problems with the FAFSA, especially the first couple of months that it was open.
“Students and families were frustrated, so it is really important that we encourage students to complete their FAFSAs,” Keller said.
“We have a lot of work to do between now and the end of the school year to get students to complete and file their FAFSAs. It seems to be on a better path now, but that has pushed back our institutions’ ability to create financial aid packages for students. That’s a concern as students are weighing their options and deciding whether to go to college or not, or which college they might want to attend,” Keller added.
“The most important thing we need to do right now is encourage students to complete and submit the FAFSA.”
On the subject of the enrollment cliff where there has been a decline in traditional college-age students, Keller said the enrollment cliff is a bigger deal for states other than Texas.
“Texas is one of about a dozen states that isn’t facing as much of an enrollment cliff in higher education. In most states, we’ve seen recent declines of the high school age population so that’s translated into enrollment decline,” Keller said.
“Texas (is) a younger, faster growing state … so we statewide we don’t see the same issues with an enrollment cliff. There are though particular counties where we have seen declining populations, especially rural areas. So depending on which county, which community, which school district, sometimes you are seeing declining populations that look more like what’s happening in other parts of the country,” he added.
Texas’ population is increasingly concentrated in the larger bigger urban areas.
Keller said other states heavily recruit Texas students because they need the students and the revenue from out-of-state students.
“What will sometimes happen is out-of-state institutions will offer scholarships to Texas students to try to attract them to the out-of-state institution. But families of students need to look at those offers very carefully because even with a scholarship you could (spend) substantially more than you would if you stayed in state,” Keller said.
Medical schools and nursing schools remain in demand, as do the more competitive universities.
“We haven’t seen that diminish much, but what we have seen is enrollment be impacted more at regional universities or some of the community colleges, especially community colleges that are in rural communities,” Keller said.
Running a college or university is expensive, especially when you have a small student population.
“It’s more challenging when you are operating and you have 1,000 students vs. 10,000 students. There are also some areas where you have some additional costs as you get very large, but you definitely see institutions where if you’re under about 10,000 students it starts becoming more expensive in general to run a university,” Keller said.
With community colleges, they focused on full-time student equivalents.
“Your cost starts to considerably go up when you get under 5,000,” he added.
The state provides some additional funding for smaller institutions, but questions come up about plans to increase enrollment and whether the university or college could consolidate with another.
