The National College Access Network (NCAN) has launched its #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker, giving states a week-by-week snapshot of rankings in their progress to achieve a 100-percent benchmark of high school seniors completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
As a part of its #FormYourFuture campaign, NCAN officials created the online interactive dashboard to inspire friendly competition among state policy leaders and educators to get students on track to college. FAFSA completion is an indicator of eventual college enrollment, the organization said.
“For some policy makers who may say, ‘The FAFSA only takes 30 minutes on average, it’s not really a problem,’ this is a concrete tool to say, ‘Then why are so few students doing it?’” said Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy at NCAN. “[Either] there is a problem with the form or we have some larger contextual problems here around the college-going conversation. Both of those are things that we need to address, but this helps us put some data into that conversation.”
NCAN’s national FAFSA tracker was inspired by FAFSA completion campaigns at the state level such as those created by the Florida College Access Network, Michigan College Access Network and Alabama Possible, some of NCAN’s member institutions. Data calculations on FAFSA completion rates and enrollment headcount of seniors at public and private high schools are provided from Federal Student Aid (FSA) and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), respectively.
Tennessee currently ranks number one – at 68.3 percent – for the highest percentage of high school seniors who complete a FAFSA application. And because the tracker also offers comparisons between the 2017-18 and 2018-19 FAFSA cycles, Louisiana ranks number one for the largest percentage change over a year at 32.9 percent.
The tracker “is a very public – but still friendly – place where you can stack yourself up against your peers,” said Bill DeBaun, creator of the FAFSA tracker dashboard and director of data and evaluation at NCAN. “No policy maker or state institution is going to want to see themselves at the bottom of this ranking. Unfortunately, someone does have to be number 51 on our list, but hopefully it spurs some kind of introspection about, ‘Ok, what are we doing differently here?’”
In some cases, DeBaun added, states are “a little bit at the mercy of their state context” or available FSA data in regards to their rankings on student FAFSA completion. In Tennessee, for instance, students are required to complete the FAFSA in order to qualify for the “Tennessee Promise” last-dollar scholarship. This year was the first year Louisiana students were required to complete the FAFSA in order to graduate from high school.
