OUR COLLEGE FINANCIAL AID: Joy Replaced by Dread & Deep Gratitude

This story was supposed to be born of joy and gratitude, and in anticipation of both it was already mostly written, in my mind at least. But the first feeling, joy, has been suddenly replaced by acute disappointment, with anxiety and occasional dread thrown in for good measure.

For I just received news that the youngest of my four children, all daughters, won't be getting much financial aid from my alma mater, one shared by my wife and my three older daughters: UNC-Chapel Hill. For the first time, my wife and I will have to foot the bill for almost the full cost of attendance. Though the aid package we've been sent is just preliminary, the final package will probably be the same.

With each of our older daughters and their cumulative many years in Chapel Hill, we received almost a full ride because of lavish aid showered on us to meet our financial need. And we've always been grateful, always felt we were lucky. But because of the contrast between that and what we now have to pay – and if not for the largesse would have had to pay each of all those cumulative years – our earlier gratitude has now intensified to a renewed sense of this feeling, the second feeling birthing this story, now deeper and stronger than before.

It's only now that we fully realize how hugely lucky we were, how without all the help given us by our alma mater (Latin for "nourishing mother"), it wouldn't have been possible for our first three to attend UNC, unless of course they took out huge loans. Yes, linked to the ongoing national frenzy of springtime college admissions, is the ongoing national story of paying for college attendance. These are two sides of the same coin, and the payment side – the business end – has led to the cumulative debt of millions of students causing a crushing national burden, let alone the individual financial burden, in many cases crushing, for these millions of young people.

President Biden has been trying his best to address this situation, getting around the Supreme Court's ruling against mass debt cancellation through a piecemeal approach, cancelling different loan categories here and there using the tool of executive action.

But along with this continuing loan crisis has come a new student aid snafu: the fiasco that has been the rollout this year of the new FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). With flaws too numerous to name and too esoteric to explain, this debacle has delayed the aid packages that colleges send students so they can know if they'll be able to afford to go. Thus my wife and I and our youngest daughter, along with millions of other Americans, have been forced into a limbo, waiting to see what the final financial numbers will be. Families need these numbers so they can compare offers from different colleges.

In our particular situation, we think our preliminary figures won't change, and so what they say is what we'd end up having to pay – and we don't know how we'd do it, thus our days of anxiety and occasional dread.

But I commend UNC for their strenuous efforts to work as fast as they can, so we can make our final attendance decision (our daughter is also considering NC State). They've been ensnared in the FAFSA mess, yet they are truly doing their best. And as I hold up before me both our present situation and the past lavish aid we got for all those years, I say again how hugely lucky we were and how deeply grateful we are.