The updates to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA process delayed the normal opening of applications and is holding up the aid awards at Iowa’s public universities. UNI financial aid director, Tim Bakula, says all three state schools had financial aid offers out to students last year by mid-February. This year some students weren’t even able to get their FAFSA completed right after the process opened.
Bakula says the universities should be seeing the results in the next couple of weeks.
He says they hope to begin awarding financial aid around the middle of April, which he says will impact students.
University of Iowa financial aid director, Brenda Buzynski, says the colleges and universities have been the guinea pigs for the upgraded system.
Buzynski says they have learned to plan and program for the unknown.
Undergraduate students receive 67% of the student financial aid at the U-I, I-S-U and U-N-I. In 2023, 41% of the region’s undergraduate financial aid came from the federal government, 41% from the regents institutions, 18% from private organizations and one percent from the state of Iowa. Buzynski and Bakula made their comments in a report during last week’s Board of Regents meeting.
