Santa Fe College students’ refunds, the money left over after financial aid paid for tuition and other charges, has been delayed by more than three weeks.
Santa Fe said issues with Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and integrating into a new system caused the delay, which affected Pell grants, federal loans and state and institutional aid.
Lily Fahy, a 20-year-old Santa Fe zoology freshman, said she was supposed to receive her Pell grant disbursements on Aug. 29, according to her financial aid portal.
“I've been planning on using that money to get an apartment so I'd be closer to school,” Fahy said. “I'd use it for my gas to get to school [and] to pay my daily bills.”
She commutes to the Gainesville campus from Ocala — about a 45 minute drive — four days a week, and the gas cost adds up to about $75 per week.
Her current job pays $13 per hour, so Fahy said the refunds would help her financially. Her financial aid refunds add up to about $3,100.
“A lot of us are relying on this money to live,” she said.
Santa Fe’s website said disbursements for Fall semester terms would begin disbursing the second week of September. It notes that some students will receive their disbursement after the timeframe.
In the last three weeks, Santa Fe students have also received scam emails that exploited the refund delays. Emails prompted students to input their BankMobile information into a google form to “facilitate access to [their] allocated funds.”
The college emailed students to warn them about the scam emails, according to an email shared with The Alligator.
James Hinsch, an 18-year-old SF forestry freshman, said he is waiting for his Pell grant and Bright Futures to disburse.
“I'm frustrated,” he said. “It's money that we were told we were going to be given. It's money that our fellow colleagues at other institutions have already been given.”
Hinsch said he commutes to Santa Fe’s Gainesville campus from Putnam County, which takes about an hour. His parents currently pay for gas, but he wanted to use the refunds to pay for vehicle repairs and an apartment in Gainesville.
“I'm in the lucky situation where I do live with my parents,” Hinsch said. “I've talked to several colleagues in classes at Santa Fe who are unable to pay rent [or] buy food because of the fact that they have no money.”
Hinsch said he knows friends at the University of North Florida and UF that have already received their disbursements, while a friend at St. John’s River State College told him they were supposed to receive their aid Sept. 20.
Hinsch said he reached out to Santa Fe’s financial aid office and was told it would come mid-September.
“Other institutions have received theirs, so [Santa Fe’s] excuse of a nationwide issue doesn't really hold up,” he said. “Is there another reason that they just don't want to tell us?”
Lisa Brosky, a Santa Fe spokesperson, wrote UF is not a good comparison with Santa Fe in an email.
One difference is that UF and other universities follow federal government rules for “‘interim’” disbursements, she wrote.
“[It] allows for students to receive aid even before the term begins,” she wrote in an email. “They have the resources and processes that allow them to do this, without waiting for every detail of a student’s financial aid package to be resolved."
Brosky said Santa Fe reviews the entire aid package before disbursing to avoid issues like students getting over-awarded. She said FAFSA issues have also persisted for months, leading to manual and slower processing.
Aid packages often contain institutional aid, meaning scholarships were also affected, according to Brosky in an email.
Santa Fe said financial aid disbursements began as of Sept. 20, according to a Sept. 25 news release.
“It will take a bit longer to complete all of the disbursements, and it’s difficult to put a date on that,” Brosky said. “We are pleased, under the circumstances, that we are only slightly behind the typical disbursement period.”
UF has not experienced any financial aid disbursement delays, according to an email from UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldan.
Jan De Asis, a 21-year-old UF health education and behavior junior, said she received her Pell grant Sept. 24.
“They used to disperse the money a week after Drop/Add usually, but now it's been a month,” De Asis said.
She said her Bright Futures and her undergraduate grant were already dispersed.
A 21-year-old Santa Fe student said she is also waiting for her Pell grant and federal loans to disperse. She requested to remain anonymous because she was up for a staff position at SF
“I talked to [the Financial Aid Office] on Sept. 13,” she said, “and they informed me that it would likely not be coming until the first week of October or later.”
The student said Santa Fe College was consistent with disbursing aid in the past and she wants to know why the college didn’t set aside extra time to address the delay.
She would use her refunds to repair her laptop and move to Gainesville to be closer to campus. The student, a Columbia County resident, currently commutes one hour each way at least five days per week to Gainesville for school and work.
“Even my friend who works in the Financial Aid Office at Santa Fe doesn't understand why it's taking too long or what the issue is,” she said. “I asked her Sept. 17 to check in about the issue, and I said to her, 'Am I actually supposed to see my aid this week, or should I accept that it's lost in the abyss?' and she said, 'Abyss.'”
Contact Timothy Wang at twang@alligator.org. Follow him on X @timothyw_g.
Timothy Wang is a junior journalism student and the Fall 2024 Santa Fe College Reporter. He was the University Administration reporter for Summer 2024. His hobbies include gaming or reading manga.
