This past Saturday, CRSM celebrated our annual Founder’s Dinner. At one point in the evening’s program, a handful of seniors came up one-by-one to the podium to introduce themselves – they each mentioned where they work in our Corporate Work Study Program, what they plan to study in college, and what university they will be attending in the coming fall. They are amazing young people and really going places.
While the Class of 2024 marks our fifth year in a row having every senior accepted to at least one bachelor’s program, and, normally, 92% or so of the graduating class matriculates to a 4-year program; this year is very different and for reasons far beyond our students’ control. As the eighteen or so seniors who volunteered that evening came to the microphone about 1/3 said they were undecided as to which school they would attend. All were accepted to several schools, but they have not been able to decide where they will attend because they have not yet received their financial assistance letters from the colleges. For those of us “in the know,” it was heartbreaking to see these incredibly gifted seniors telling the audience that they wanted to study nursing or engineering or pre-law but were “undecided” about which school.
How can you decide about attending college when you do not know what it will cost? Keep in mind that our average family annual income is $45,000 and our average family size is 4.4 persons. A difference of two thousand dollars might as well be twenty thousand for our families. They just can’t even consider it.
Why don’t our seniors know what it will cost for college? In a word… not really a word but an acronym… it’s FAFSA. While FASFA is five letters long, it might as well be a four-letter word this year. FASFA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and is used by nearly all colleges and universities in the U.S. when determining what financial support a student should receive. The FASFA formulas and processes have needed an update for some time. Yet, in their great wisdom, the U.S. Department of Education rushed a conversion without building in contingencies should there be any complications moving to a brand-new system. Predictably, the resulting conversion has been a complete (with the aid of another acronym) SNAFU!
Among myriad problems, errors, and bugs, the biggest obstacle for our families has been Social Security Numbers. One of the first required fields to complete the new FASFA was to enter your SSN. All CRSM students must have an SSN to participate in our Corporate Work Study Program, but not all our parents do. Many have an ITIN instead. The IRS issues ITINs to individuals who are required to have a U.S. taxpayer identification number but who do not have, and are not eligible to obtain, a Social Security number. Essentially, these are people caught up in our dysfunctional immigration system. Many, MANY people want to enter the U.S legally but are effectively prohibited due to limits imposed on the number of immigrants the U.S will legally accept from various countries. Consider this: According to an article in the Dallas News (before COVID), if you are from Mexico AND the married son or daughter of an existing U.S. citizen, it will take you least 22 years to get a green card, the first step toward citizenship. Can you imagine how many decades, if at all, it would take for someone not related to a U.S. citizen to enter this country through legal means?
So, many of our parents have come to the U.S. unable to get a SSN and have, instead, obtained an ITIN from the government and are paying their taxes. ITIN holders are not eligible for all the tax benefits and public services that U.S. citizens and other taxpayers can receive. You could say that ITIN holders are subsidizing the tax benefits to U.S. Citizens. According to the American Immigration Council, it is estimated in 2024 dollars that ITIN holders have paid over $6.6 billion in payroll and Medicare taxes and $31 billion in total taxes.
About 70% of CRSM families have at least one parent with an ITIN. When filling out the FASFA, even if one parent had a valid SSN, the system would not accept an ITIN and the application was not accepted. As a result, up until just a few weeks ago, about 2/3s of our families could not complete FAFSA and so, colleges and universities could not give them a definite aid amount. Students were accepted but had no idea what it would cost if they enrolled.
Thankfully, the Department of Education has recently issued some “work arounds” so our students can complete their FASFA. Unfortunately, it’s very late in the process. Most colleges require a decision from students on whether they will attend their school by May 1. Our counselors have been begging for extensions.
As of today, just 5 of our 95 CRSM seniors have not completed their FASFA. That number was much higher on April 1. It is only due to the herculean efforts of our college counselors that we are here. While seniors have finally been able to complete the FASFA, their application must still be processed, then shared with the colleges where they applied, and those schools must then determine the financial assistance they will offer. So, while most of our students have finally finished FASFA, their colleges (where they have already been accepted) have not yet issued award letters. Oh, and just by the way, all our alumni currently studying in college must also complete FASFA to renew their assistance. What a mess!
Less than 15 of our 95 seniors will be able to commit to a school by May 1. We hope a majority will be able to commit by May 15. Normally, most of our students are committed to a college or university by December 1 and here we are starting the month of May!
Basically, our college counselors have been “pulling all-nighters” since Thanksgiving.
They are the real heroes here, fighting federal bureaucracy to give some talented students a chance when the chips are already stacked against them. Thank God for our college counselors – saints among us! ¡Viva, Cristo Rey!