As a new school year gets underway some students at Cuesta College have been experiencing delays with their financial aid payments.
Cuesta College officials say due to ongoing technical issues in the 2024-2025 FAFSA changes, their financial aid office may experience delays in processing student eligibility, awards, and disbursements.
“I go in and get help to fill out my FAFSA work because it can be really confusing, and it's a new system this year,” said Savannah King, a Cuesta College student. ‘There's been a lot of people who need help filling that out, and then now students are coming in and asking like when the financial aid is going to be disbursed.”
King is a mother of two and a scholarship recipient attending Cuesta College.
She’s part of the Extended Opportunity Programs and Services and has reached out for assistance when applying for financial aid.
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King says she is still waiting for one more grant and is worried about its arrival.
“Without those scholarships, I would have been way more affected by the delay because I'm a mom to two kids,” said King. “I pay my rent with a lot of my financial aid, groceries, books, everything. The biggest grant that I usually get per semester. It's called the Chaffee Grant, and because the FAFSA and other financial aid disbursements are delayed, that grant is also being delayed.”
Dr. Elizabeth Coria, the Assistant Superintendent and Vice President of Student Success & Support Programs at Cuesta College says the federal student aid application for the new school year has faced several changes to its system.
Coria says the delays in financial aid disbursements are occurring nationwide.
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“All of that has caused ongoing delays with processing and has caused our office to have to relook at and re-design and relook at how we process what our policies are, update all our communications and [our] response to the changes with the FAFSA,” said Coria. “It also caused our vendors that deal with all of our software to also have to then fix their platforms in order to respond to the changes.”
Dr. Coria says students not selected for verification on their federal student aid application received their disbursement a week before the semester began.
However, students who were selected needed to provide government-issued documentation.
She says part of the process for verification is to mitigate financial aid fraud.
“Students that were either selected for verification and by the Department of Education or have to follow up with any documentation,” said Coria. “Those were the students that are really getting impacted.”
Other Cuesta College students told KSBY News about the challenges they’re facing.
“For the Pell Grant, they gave me the specific days when the funds were supposed to be distributed, but that's been well past for about 10 days now, and I was like, "Okay, I'll just be patient,'” said William Dawes, a Cuesta College student. “But when I try to go to the FAFSA or the financial aid on Cuesta’s portal and go home, it just says like I can't load the page.”
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“It's always been super difficult to get my stuff through, especially cause my parents are undocumented and they recently just became documented. Now they have their green card and everything,” Brandon Choi, a Cuesta College student. “But I feel because they're undocumented, it would take longer sometimes. I wouldn't even get my financial aid until like the second month of school sometimes.”
Dr. Coria says students who have not yet paid for their classes will not be dropped and will have a hold placed on their student records.
Cuesta College financial aid disbursements are scheduled every Tuesday and students can check their student account on the MyCuesta portal to confirm that their aid has been disbursed.
