The College Board is Going to Rescue the FAFSA, But Can It Rescue Itself?

The U.S. Department of Education is turning to two executives at the College Board to fix the problems that have plagued the launch of the “simplified” Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a launch that turned out to be anything but simple. College Board President Jeremy Singer will be the new FAFSA czar (his official title seems to be FAFSA executive adviser). He will be joined by Jeff Olson, the CB’s Chief Information Officer, who has overseen the Bluebook technology that has allowed for a transition to a digital SAT.

The announcement has received mixed reviews. Singer and Olson are high-profile, respected names providing confidence that the Office of Student Federal Aid is serious about addressing the issues that continue to frustrate students, counselors, and financial aid professionals.  

At the same time many in the financial aid community have concerns about the College Board’s new role and influence because it is the owner of the College Scholarship Service Profile, a competitor to the FAFSA.  That creates concerns about actual or potential conflict of interest, since neither Singer nor Olson is actually leaving the College Board or their lucrative compensation but will rather be on loan to the Department of Education.  

The word “loan” implies a payback.  What does the College Board get in return? The same experience and expertise that make Singer and Olson ideal mechanics of the new FAFSA also give them the ability to understand its inner workings in a way that strengthens the market for the CSS Profile. How will they navigate their roles as government contractors versus their roles as employees of the College Board? None of us will be surprised that a College Board spokesperson declined to comment when asked about conflicts of interest by Inside Higher Ed.

I’ve been trying to envision how this arrangement might work, and I realize that the scenarios in my head come from television shows and movies. One has Singer and Olson ripping off their jackets and ties to reveal Superman-like costumes, emblazoned with the College Board acorn (trademark included) in place of the “S.”  In the other they are secret agents in an early Bond movie, with David Coleman as M outlining their mission, except that Coleman for some reason morphs into criminal mastermind Ernst Blofeld holding a cat. 

In my opinion there is a far more compelling reason to be concerned about the hirings than the potential conflict of interest.  How can the College Board expect to fix the FAFSA when it doesn’t seem to be able to fix its own problems delivering its signature product, the SAT?

Recently there has been considerable discussion about the difficulty students in certain areas of the country have had being able to take the SAT in June or for the upcoming August administration.  A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times written by a student living in the San Francisco Bay area indicated that the nearest available test center for August was 400 miles away, and compared registering for the SAT in the Bay Area to scoring tickets for a Taylor Swift concert. The student and his family ended up flying to Dallas to take the test. Several posts from counselors on the NACAC HiveMind also exhibited frustration with the limited number of test spaces and how quickly they filled up as soon as they were made available.

The College Board has what is referred to in other industries as a supply-chain issue.  It has difficulty getting its product to customers, and that’s a sign of a business in danger. It also seems absurd that major metropolitan areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest near Seattle are “testing deserts.”  Given that the challenge with the FAFSA is making it accessible to those who need it, how does hiring two executives from the College Board inspire confidence that they have what it takes to rescue the FAFSA when the SAT availability issues persist?

That may be unfair to Singer and Olson.  The CB is a large organization (perhaps even “too big to fail”) with a number of silos (admission testing, Advanced Placement, CSS), and perhaps problems in one area do not suggest problems across the board.  But the problems in test delivery are not new, but rather rooted in the College Board’s business model.

That model has always relied on high schools doing the work of administering the SAT by serving as test centers. The College Board collects the money, and the schools do the work.  The SAT Suite of Assessments page on the College Board website argues that schools becoming test centers provide students with “familiar surroundings and easy access” and foster “a college-going culture.” They also foster a test-taking culture.

At some point the College Board moved from relying on the kindness of strangers to expecting the kindness of strangers.  Over the past few years it has pushed for school-based testing administered during the school day.  A presentation at the NACAC Conference in Baltimore last fall reported that 65 percent of testing is now school-based.  

There are a couple of issues with school-based testing, but the primary one is the presumption that high schools are agents of the College Board and that administering the SAT is a legitimate part of the high school curriculum rather than an add-on.  Schools and school counselors have probably fed this assumption through the years by administering the PSAT and AP exams in school, but we don’t exist to relieve the College Board of its responsibility to make its products available to customers.  The time has come to re-think the business model.

The College Board’s supply-chain issues have surfaced at a time when a number of elite colleges and universities have returned to requiring applicants to submit test scores. Those institutions share the blame for the mess.  Adding the requirement without taking responsibility for how students will fulfill the requirement constitutes what is called in government an unfunded mandate.  From an ethical standpoint, if I impose a requirement I should provide the means to satisfy the requirement. If test scores are essential parts of admission review for elite colleges, those colleges and universities should become or sponsor test centers.

That’s a justice issue, but it’s also an equity issue.  Wealthy families can afford to drive hundreds of miles and stay in a hotel or fly out-of-state to take the SAT.  And yet the “diamonds in the rough” from less privileged economic backgrounds, the very students that elite colleges claim are identified by and benefit from test scores, don’t have that luxury. Do we really want another admission practice that advantages the already-privileged? 

I hope the College Board executives can fix the problems with the FAFSA.  I’d feel more confident about that if the CB would fix its own problems first.