Didn’t fill out FAFSA? Ohio high school grads lost $111 million in aid

On Apr 11, 2022

The home page of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as FAFSA.

Ohio high school graduates left millions in federal student aid on the table last year by not filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as FAFSA, according to data from the National College Attainment Network analyzed by the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio.

Nearly 66,700 high school seniors did not complete FAFSA last year, said AICUO President C. Todd Jones. Of those students, about 39% – 25,718 seniors – were eligible for Pell grants.

If all of the eligible seniors had applied and received the average Pell grant amount, they would have received more than $111 million in federal student aid.

Ohio's 2021 high school graduates missed out on $111 million in federal student aid by not completing FAFSA last year.

That’s more than all of Ohio’s neighbors, except Pennsylvania. Jones said it’s troubling to see states, such as Illinois, which has a larger population, leave less money on the table.

Estimates vary as to exactly how much money Ohio students lose by not filling out FAFSA, said Mike Duffey, senior vice chancellor at the Ohio Department of Higher Education.

In February, Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor Randy Gardner wrote an op-ed in The Dispatch about FAFSA in which he said: “Each year, Ohio students forfeit more than $80 million in free grants for further education. Stated differently, Ohioans are leaving $80 million on the table each year – money they could have accessed by completing a FAFSA.”

Duffey said the state uses a slightly different dataset to arrive at its calculation. But between disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the usual lingering confusion about FAFSA some families experience each year, Duffey said it’s safe to say Ohioans missed out on at least $100 million in student aid.

“Even the best rough estimate gets to the case point which is students are losing a very large sum of money,” Jones said.

Nationally, the high school class of 2021 completed nearly 5% – or about 102,000 – fewer FAFSA applications than the class of 2020 by the end of last year’s FAFSA cycle, according to the National College Attainment Network.

This year’s Ohio high school seniors have seen a slight increase in the number of FAFSA forms completed so far. As of March 25, 47.7% of this year’s seniors have completed the form compared to 47.1% of last year’s class and 43.6% nationwide, according to state data.

Big changes are coming in the next few years to simplify FAFSA, including a significantly shortened form and an increase to the maximum Pell grant amount students can receive.

Most of those changes, however, won’t take place until the 2024-2025 application cycle, which opens on Oct. 2, 2023.

The biggest thing that could dramatically increase the number of high school seniors filling out FAFSA though, Jones said, is making its completion a graduation requirement.

Similar requirements have been made in Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and Illinois. In Louisiana’s first year alone, FAFSA completion rates among seniors increased by 10%. Other states, including Ohio, have considered following a similar path.

“If the state is going to do something, they should require FAFSA to graduate,” Jones said. “There is no better evidence where they are changing the curve markedly.”

Gov. Mike DeWine proposed the requirement in his state budget proposal last year, but it ultimately didn’t make the final cut. Duffey said school districts could still pursue the requirement on their own.

Still, Duffey said the state is investing resources to get more students to complete FAFSA. In March 2021, the Ohio Department of Higher Education and Ohio Department of Education announced they would invest $2.85 million in federal Governor’s Emergency Education Relief to funding for FAFSA completion projects over the next year and a half. Some of those projects included direct grants to college-readiness organizations, data system upgrades and professional development.

“The pandemic caused a lot of pauses – in careers, in college admissions, in students taking gap years,” Duffey said. “We just want to make sure those pauses don’t become stops.”