Financial aid office lacks consistency when it comes to helping students

When you have to handle financial aid for more than 45,000 students, something is bound to go wrong. For proof of that, look to UCLA’s financial aid office – a demonstration that you can’t trust anyone.

UCLA’s financial aid office shows how bureaucracy can hinder an organization’s mission. Instead of helping students navigate the difficult process of paying for college, the office puts up barriers where it hurts most: their pocketbooks.

Students depend heavily on the office, which is in charge of processing students’ FAFSA and California DREAM Act applications, to make sure they can attend UCLA. No matter their major, everyone understands the importance of financial aid and how reliant students are on those who work in the financial aid office.

Despite that, the help students get is underwhelming. Employees ask for unnecessary paperwork to disburse aid and take a long time to respond to students. The inconsistent information office employees provide confuses students and slows down the filing process. Students who call or visit the office to ask questions about financial aid often get different responses, leaving them with more questions than before.

This lack of proper communication ends up hurting students. These issues need to be dealt with in order for Bruins to be able to continue their higher education.

A big part of the financial aid office’s role is to answer students’ questions on demand. Brianne Compton, the financial aid office’s assistant director of compliance and training, said answers to students’ questions can vary depending on how the question is phrased.

“Oftentimes a student can divulge relevant information one time and not the other, which then changes our answers,” Compton said.

But even when students ask standard questions, the staff seem to be confused about what responses to provide. Compton said it’s up to students to keep their questions consistent, so employees can answer properly. But students should be able to rely on office employees to provide responses to simple questions, such as where to find an office.

Natalie Weber, a first-year chemistry/materials science student, said when asking about how to submit a scholarship check, the financial aid office’s staff sent her around different areas of the building because employees kept responding differently.

“I went to turn in a scholarship check and wasn’t sure what office to go to, so I asked employees, who each referred me to three different locations,” Weber said. “It was odd to me that the people in the department didn’t know what to do with a fairly basic problem.”

The office’s labyrinth of hurdles and complications leaves students confused and forces them to find their own solutions to problems. And while there is an online submission system where students can ask questions, there can be delays in getting a response.

Handling paperwork is, ironically, also a big struggle for the office. Students may submit paperwork early, but because of the financial aid office’s complicated system, students’ cases keep getting pushed week after week. Constant impossible requests and comments from the office can leave students perplexed and concerned about their financial statuses.

Brian Brown, document management supervisor for students with last names beginning with letters OMA to ZZZ, said office employees aim to process a student’s paperwork as soon as possible. But how fast that is varies based on completeness of the documents, the time of submission and the volume of paperwork the office is dealing with at the time.

But this process is often a guessing game for students.

Aleksander Berg, a second-year economics student, said his financial status has changed since he submitted his FAFSA for the 2018-2019 year, so he had to submit appeals to try to get more aid for the academic year.

“I requested (an) income appeal (Oct. 5), and they have asked for multiple documents since then to assist in the review of our case,” he said. “Last week, they asked for my mother’s 2018 tax returns, which don’t even exist yet. We are paying out of pocket right now.”

At this point, the real challenge isn’t getting into UCLA. It’s getting financial aid out of it.

Most students are asked to submit some kind of paperwork in order to prove they need financial aid. The paperwork requested of students online is based on an automatic system that requests information once a student submits their FAFSA or DREAM application, but the requests might not correlate to the paperwork asked of a student if they were to go to the office in person. If a student were provided wrong information online, their aid could be withheld.

UCLA’s financial aid office needs to have a more efficient system for processing students’ paperwork and answering their questions. Students need to be thorough when seeking financial information or navigating yearly document changes; that’s precisely why they rely on employees to help them. It’s not difficult to create a standard training system that ensures employees have accurate responses to questions students might have. And the office should have yearly trainings that keep employees up to date about current forms.

Instead of providing excuses as to why certain problems exist, financial aid employees should work to fix their system, because, unlike students, they are actually getting money for being at the office.