Cardona to Black Students: Don’t Miss Out on FAFSA Like I Did

Having spent months fixing the botched overhaul of the online Free Application for Federal Student Aid, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has a message for Black college-bound students: Don’t bypass the FAFSA like he did when he headed off to college. “I definitely left money on the table,” Cardona told Word In Black on Tuesday. As the first in his family to attend college, Cardona says, he didn’t realize how much the FAFSA, and the federal aid it brings, could have eased the sting of his tuition bills. Now, after some nine months of fixing bugs, untangling errors, and clearing millions of backlogged applications, Cardona wants Black students to take full advantage of the program. So he’s spreading the word, touting steps the White House has taken to make things easier.“We have a nationwide strategy to get students from Black communities to fill out FAFSA,” including financial support for churches and grassroots organizations to hold clinics for high school seniors, he says. “We increased the ease of filling out FAFSA because over 80% of our Black borrowers are Pell eligible,” he says, referring to a federal grant program.“We have to do all of the above, in order to address the negative...