The leaders of Colorado Mesa University proposed a financial gamble at the beginning of the year. They’d gathered
for a January board meeting to discuss how the Grand Junction university, which largely serves lower-income
students, would respond to the botched rollout of a new federal financial aid form that was keeping prospective
enrollees from knowing how much money they’d receive from the U.S. government to help pay for school.

‍
How long would many of the 10,000 students that CMU usually serves wait for their financial aid package before
deciding college wasn’t for them? President John Marshall didn’t want to find out.

‍
Someone at the board meeting floated an idea: What if the university calculated how much financial aid it believed
each student would qualify for to help them make informed college decisions? If CMU calculated wrong, the school
would own its promise when the federal dollars eventually came through and cover the difference between its
calculation and what the federal government ultimately paid out.

‍
Colorado Mesa University President John Marshall, center, holds the door open for a campus tour of the
school’s University Center on Friday.

“There was this long, pregnant pause around the table and you could kind of see, with almost no debate, all these
faces nodding,” Marshall said.

‍
Marshall and the school’s chief financial officer executed back-of-the-napkin math to estimate by how much they
could afford to be wrong. If they were off by 20%, CMU would lose about $2 million, they figured.A more realistic
estimate — off by about 5% — meant the school would lose around $500,000.

‍
But by doing nothing, Marshall said, the university risked losing a whole cohort of students who decided to forego
college for fear they couldn’t afford it.Marshall and CMU’s leadership rolled the dice, knowing they likely would lose
money. Now, the university is reaping the benefits of that risk.

‍
Their calculations were off by $283,620 — lower than anticipated, Marshall said. But in turn, CMU’s new student
enrollment this fall is up by 30%, the largest freshman class on record for the university.

‍
Marshall called the initiative — dubbed “The Wait is Over” — an objective success.

‍
“Somebody out there is going to have a different life because we were able to do something to convince them to come
to school,” said Lindsey Campbell, CMU’s executive director of financial aid. “It’s just cool.”
‍

The Wait is Over

‍
The math Marshall and his colleagues worked out during the January board meeting was based on how many
students in years past qualified for Pell grants — federal money awarded by financial need that recipients don’t have
to pay back.

‍
Using that data, they guessed how many students would qualify for Pell grants this fall and estimated how much that
would cost.

‍
For the real calculations, the ones presented to prospective students as their promised financial aid package,
Marshall needed more precision — and to get CMU’s financial aid department on board.

‍
When Marshall first pitched the “Wait is Over” campaign to Campbell, he remembers her eyes growing wide as
saucers.

‍
“I told her that I know this is going to sound crazy, but stick with me for a minute,” Marshall said.

‍
Campbell’s initial shock softened into brainstorming whether the idea was even feasible for her 11-person
department to pull off when they already were stretched thin dealing with the federal financial aid crisis.

‍
The U.S. Department of Education introduced a new version of the FreeApplication for Federal StudentAid in late
2023 in a bid to make it easier to use and to provide more money to needy college students. Students fill out FAFSA
to find out how much money they could receive from the federal government to go to college based on income.
But the rollout of the new online form was plagued with delays, errors and widespread confusion last fall and earlier
this year, leaving students and higher education experts worried about a lack of participation in a program that can
make the cost of college feasible for marginalized students.

‍
Campbell had a thought that could make the board’s big idea work.

‍
CMU recently partnered with a new net-price calculator company. Most universities have tools on their websites in
which aspiring students can fill out their financial information to receive cost-of-attendance estimates. The
estimated cost for a full year of school for a Colorado resident living on campus this upcoming year is about $26,800,
including housing, food, tuition and other costs.

‍
With the help of the company that built the existing tool for CMU, Campbell helped create a more accurate version
that would send students’ information straight to the financial aid department.

‍
A few weeks later, “The Wait is Over” launched on Valentine’s Day.

“The initial white-knuckle panic turned out not to be true,” Marshall said.

‍
CMU issued nearly 4,000 early financial aid offers long before the federal government, stymied by the
malfunctioning form, sent out its aid packages.

‍
About 1,000 of those offers were sent to prospective new students. Of those, 900 registered for the fall semester,
Campbell said.

‍
Putting CMU on the map

‍
While Kimberly Medina, CMU’s assistant vice president for enrollment management, was sure the “Wait is Over”
initiative contributed to the enrollment increase, she said the university didn’t just send out a couple of marketing
emails about it and call it good.

‍
The financial aid department held frequent workshops at high schools across the state to promote the initiative and
the school’s scholarship promising tuition coverage to qualifying families who earn $65,000 or less. Marshall visited
schools with lower-income student populations to promote the initiative.

‍
The most important thing Marshall thinks “The Wait is Over” did was put CMU on the map for families with potential
first-generation college students.

‍
“I would visit these high schools and hear from kid after kid that they couldn’t get FAFSA to work, and I would tell
them, ‘We’ll figure out what your financial aid is going to be right now,’ ” Marshall said. “It made a difference.”
Olathe High School Principal Scot Brown said he appreciated Marshall making the pitch for higher education to his
Western Slope students.

‍
“A lot of our kids’ families don’t see a way they’ll be able to make college work financially,” Brown said. “This opens
up doors and provides them an opportunity.”

‍
After Marshall explained that CMU would guarantee an early financial aid package and had available scholarship
opportunities, Brown said his students — predominantly Hispanic with lower socioeconomic backgrounds — lined
up to ask Marshall questions about the possibility of college.

‍
“A lot of our students have never been out of the valley,” Brown said. “You have to raise the awareness that college is
possible for them, and I appreciate CMU showing students the possibilities.”

‍
Courage and calculations

‍
CMU’s own FAFSA completion likely was boosted by the initiative, too.

‍
During a year when institutions across the state and nation saw FAFSA completion plummet amid turmoil over the
updated form’s rollout, CMU only saw an overall 0.5% decline compared to last year and a 0.5% increase in FAFSA
submissions among new students, according to university data.

‍
Comparatively, the country has seen a 10.9% decrease in FAFSA completion this year compared to last, according to
the most recent data from the National CollegeAttainment Network. Colorado has seen a 9.9% decline in FAFSA
completion, the data showed.

‍
CMU leaders received inquiries from other universities asking how they were putting out aid offers before the
federal government, Marshall said.

‍
The money the university ended up owing from its miscalculation was worth it, Marshall said.

‍
“Hundreds of kids are going to college that maybe wouldn’t have gone anywhere otherwise,” Marshall said.
CMU’s freshman class is so full that some students will be starting out the year living in hotels rather than dorm
rooms, Marshall said.

“I would argue this initiative is not the kind of thing you do unless there’s a really deep sense of common purpose
across the institution at all levels,” Marshall said. “Everyone was on board and made it happen in a few weeks. That’s
courage.”

‍

Original Article Here: https://www.denverpost.com/2024/07/28/colorado-mesa-university-fafsa-financial-aid-delays/

‍