The Atlantic: Fafsa: "Colleges Are Facing an Enrollment Nightmare"

Started by Wahoo Redux, April 02, 2024, 06:30:23 PM

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Wahoo Redux

April 02, 2024, 06:30:23 PM
The Atlantic: "Colleges Are Facing an Enrollment Nightmare"

Lower Deck:
QuoteA botched effort to streamline the financial-aid process may prevent a huge number of students from going to college in the fall.

Quoteseemingly every phase of the implementation has gone wrong; an ostensible process of simplification has made enrolling in college much harder. And while the government scrambles to fix the problems it created, time is running out for an entire nation's worth of high-school seniors. The effect on college attendance threatens to be even worse than the coronavirus pandemic was.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

pgher

#1
April 02, 2024, 06:59:25 PM
I read an article somewhere--IHE, NY Times, can't remember--that the real issue was that the Department of Education took advantage of this opportunity to do a full overhaul of the IT infrastructure. That is, rather than just changing the form a little, they scrapped the old COBOL programming and re-did it from the ground up. But, they didn't resource it accordingly. Of COURSE there will be bugs when you roll out a new system. They simply didn't build in enough time for testing, debugging, etc.

Hibush

#2
April 03, 2024, 09:09:33 AM
How many business systems still rely on COBOL?

mythbuster

#3
April 03, 2024, 09:33:56 AM
Yes they overhauled the entire application- and then they forgot to check their email? See this article from the NYTimes. FAFSA Blunders. 

How do you miss 70,000 emails??

marshwiggle

#4
April 03, 2024, 10:50:54 AM
Quote from: mythbuster on April 03, 2024, 09:33:56 AMYes they overhauled the entire application- and then they forgot to check their email? See this article from the NYTimes. FAFSA Blunders. 

How do you miss 70,000 emails??

Maybe they weren't automatically forwarded to a real, living, human being's regular email address?
(Or, for some similarly ridiculous reason, got automatically sent to junk mail.)

It takes so little to be above average.

jimbogumbo

#5
April 03, 2024, 12:22:00 PM
Quote from: Hibush on April 03, 2024, 09:09:33 AMHow many business systems still rely on COBOL?


It is still lurking out there all over the place, even when it might not seem like it. Banner jumps to mind.

lightning

#6
April 03, 2024, 10:20:27 PM
Financial Aid offices for universities aren't exactly paragons of accuracy & efficiency themselves.

I can see the financial aid officers using the FAFSA debacle as a convenient fall guy for anything and everything that goes wrong in their offices.
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