Chancellor: Federal financial-aid delays may affect UI enrollment process

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CHAMPAIGN — While the University of Illinois prides itself on keeping tuition increases to a minimum, Chancellor Robert Jones still has one concern about prospective students being able to commit to attend:

FAFSA submissions, which normally open in the fall, didn't open this year until Dec. 1. (The Free Application for Student Aid is a form students must complete when applying for federal student aid, such as grants and loans.)

This year, the UI will be announcing Early Action admission on Jan. 26 and Regular Decision admission in early March, but FAFSA processing won't start until late January.

"Unfortunately, there has always been a gap between admission and when the financial aid information is in the hands of those that are trying to get admitted," Jones said. "That gap now is going to be even wider."

The Urbana-Champaign campus received 73,597 applications this year, a record-breaking number, Jones told the UI Board of Trustees on Thursday.

He said that FAFSA delays will only complicate the work of processing all those applications.

Universities use FAFSA information to determine the financial aid packages they'll offer students, and those financial aid packages make a huge difference for most students as they decide where to attend.

In the past, the UI typically had a two- to three-week delay between admissions and financial aid information.

This year, leadership is predicting a four- to six-week delay, a wider gap than they've ever had before.

"We can notify the people that have been admitted, but they won't make a decision about whether they're going to enroll until they have their FAFSA in," Jones said. "It's one thing to get admitted, it's another thing to make sure you have the financial resources and support from the federal government and other resources."

Jones said the university has already been pushing for the federal government to simplify the FAFSA process.

"Far too many families just give up and don't even fill out the form because they find it very cumbersome, difficult to navigate, asking for information that a lot of low-income families didn't have," Jones said. "As we try to increase equity and diversity across racial and socioeconomic lines, to have a federal process that was so cumbersome that people wouldn't even engage was counterproductive."

Beyond campus

UI system leadership completed their third statewide tour this year and are already beginning to plan the fourth.

This year, challenges accessing food and health care in rural areas of the state were the focus, which left an impact both on Jones and on UI system President Tim Killeen.

"It's been eye-opening for us, because when you show up in a church and you talk to what they're doing there and how they're worried about, you know, food insecurity, you get a real sense of the challenges that we need to take on," Killeen said.

As he sees it, if the school is going to have "Illinois" in its name, it's important to connect with all parts of the state.

Killeen said that the university is currently looking at ways to help with rural health and getting more advanced placement and college readiness courses to high schools to help reduce the cost of higher education.

"One of the things that we've learned is that there's no such thing as enough communication. If people don't know in a community that there are these opportunities for financial aid or significant programs that are relative to them and that they'd be welcome on our campuses to see what's going on, et cetera, then you can't expect them to make it up," Killeen said. "So showing up is important."

On the agenda

The UI board of trustees approved every item on the agenda for its Jan. 18 meeting, including the appointment of Scott Rice as university counsel and elimination of the long-inactive Institute for Competitive Manufacturing.

Highlights of the agenda included:

$3.75 million for repairs to Memorial Stadium

* , specifically to replace expansion joints in the east stands and paint steel on the east ramp and upper balcony.

A $6.4 million increase in budget to replace the roof of the

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences will henceforth be called the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Science

* to reflect more aspects of its mission.

Honorary degrees were awarded to College of Education dean emeritus James D. Anderson, former UI faculty member and current distinguished professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of California San Diego Larry Smarr and Harvard professor of medicine and epidemiology I-Min Lee.

* A

2 percent increase to tuition rates for new undergraduates who don't live in Illinois and graduate students, as well as a 3 percent increase in tuition for the veterinary medicine professional program. Student fees will hold steady.