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Stephanie Wiechmann
Universities need information from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA to calculate financial aid offers for accepted students that are the key to college for more than 17 million students nationally. Paula Luff is Ball State's vice president for enrollment planning and management. She says a multiyear federal plan to simplify the form delayed and complicated it.

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Stephanie Wiechmann
Students couldn't fill it out with a reliable connection until essentially mid-January, three months later than previous years. And she says they couldn't make necessary corrections or updates once it was sent, as is usual.

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Paula Luff
So normally at this point in the cycle, we would have received around 24,000 FAFSA records. At this point, we have 5,200 FAFSAs – 1,100 are rejected, meaning there’s something wrong, but nobody can go in and fix them.  And according to our financial aid folks, the records we have so far are those that were filed between December 31 and January 15.

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Stephanie Wiechmann
Last week, Ball State announced it would extend its enrollment confirmation date by a month to June 1st. That's because Luff says students won't receive financial aid packages until the end of April or May, instead of late January or February. In previous years, Luff says colleges around the country expect the delay and confusion to mean fewer low income and first generation students will begin college this fall.

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Stephanie Wiechmann
In Muncie. Stephanie Wiechmann, IPR news.