Articles
Higher Education
myStudentAid, the DoE’s FAFSA App, Gets Mixed Reviews
By Henry Kronk
November 13, 2018
On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) paid a visit to Sevierville, Tenn., a small town in the Smoky Mountains (and hometown of Dolly Parton). They’ll spend some time in Sevier County High School to demonstrate the department’s myStudentAid app, which allows students to complete their FAFSA application from their mobile device.
Somewhat similar to tax filing software, myStudentAid coaches learners through the application and uses ‘skip logic,’ allowing applicants to move beyond questions that don’t apply to them.
Development of the app was born out of the reality that, while roughly 70% of high school seniors applied to college in the 2017-2018 school year, only 60% of the class filled out a FAFSA application. That means billions of untapped student resources were left on the table.
Plans to Expand myStudentAid
The app debuted a beta version in August and the full version was available for download as of October 1. As of October 17, the Department of Education announced plans to include five additional services within the app which, besides the FAFSA application, would include capabilities to inform learners of the status of their federal loans, a checklist that describes actions that need to be taken, an accounting of their unused federal loans, the ability to enroll in an FSA rewards program, and portal specific to the institution in which the learner enrolls.
As Clare McCann, deputy director of higher education policy at New America, a non-partisan think tank and former DoE official told CNBC, “The app itself is pretty snazzy. This will be important for a lot of people who don’t have regular access to computers.”
Reviews Remain Mixed
But more than a couple users disagree. Currently on the Google Play and Apple App Store, the myStudentAid app has a rating of 3.5 and 3.3, respectively. Over 85 users have rated it on both marketplaces. And the distribution of votes with each mobile OS follows a similar pattern. While the majority of users give the app a rating of 5 out 5, the second most common rating is 1 out of 5.
User Carie Borkowski penned the most-liked review to date on the Google Play store. She gave the app 1 star, writing, “Wow, worse than I expected– and I didn’t expect a lot. Tried to log on and either got an infinite “please wait” message, or an error message. I thought it was me, so I switched networks and still, nothing. Tried to reset my password and I got an error message, no text to reset password. Can’t even log in. I’ll do it the traditional way, thanks for the effort I guess?”
To be fair, this review was written on October 3, two days after the full app went live. But through November, users have reported inexplicable error messages, difficulty verifying their identity, heavy data use which can crash the program, and more.
On the other hand, plenty of users left overwhelmingly positive reviews. One Android user writes, “Since I’ve tried for a whole week to fill out the online FAFSA, I then contacted customer support. They told me a couple ways to troubleshoot the web browser. None helped due to the glitches. So I decided to download the app. It ran slow, but I had to be patient with it. BAM it’s submitted finally!”
While that’s not a positive review of the system overall, there’s more than enough evidence to believe it’s a step in the right direction.
“Being a financial aid counselor I am excited about the new app,” writes an iOS user. “I have went through the app and it offers a lot of resources through the one app. This makes it easier for the students to complete FAFSA, complete loan process and they can also log in and find out information regarding their loan. Great app and easy to use!”
The myStudentAid appears to have some way to come before the kinks have been worked out. But for now, it’s helping at least some college-going learners fill out their FAFSA application more conveniently.
Featured Image: Rawpixel, Unsplash.
It is clear that the government has no control over federal dollars being given away. The monitoring of schools has been a disaster and the accreditation of schools is NOT dependable unless you are Ivy League school bound. Yes, smaller programs should receive funding but only with measures in pLace to ensure that every dollar is spent wisely. Money should be used as a stepping stone and should also be given to programs that provide internships that assist getting a decent first job. From there a student gains the ability to pay more of a portion of their own college expense and should be able to borrow say 50% of a college class. Community college should be free for a certain amount of credits with assistance for books for truly poor. Graduate students should pay for themselves through either job assistance or having assets to acquire a loan through a credit union or bank. I could be totally flawed in my thinking about things but I have spent many years in college and have seen a lot of waste. The for-profit college is a experience started as a good idea but has proven to be disasterous when they started trading on Wall Street. Greed and strong lobbying to keep the gravy train rolling along should have stopped a long time ago. Great performing regional programs working with local employers that gives a great stepping stone to grow and pay for future education is the way to go.