Projected 6% reduction in student credit hours; ‘It is not too late to join us for the fall,’ SOU president says

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

Southern Oregon University budgeted for a 1-3% reduction in student credit hours this fall, but is now facing the need to restructure its budget by $2.7 million as the university lowers enrollment projections due to a significantly delayed rollout of federal aid applications anticipated to prompt a 6% reduction in student credit hours.

Significant delays in processing for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that are projected to significantly impact freshman enrollment this fall will prompt a $2.7 million hit to the budget, according to a news release issued by the university in August. FAFSA submission has become much more complicated in the past year as the Department of Education has aimed at streamlining the FAFSA process. Many are continuing to struggle with submitting their FAFSA after months of failed attempts. Delays are happening nationwide.

“It’s astounding how unpredictable this year is,” said Casey Shillam, executive vice president and provost of SOU, in a phone interview with Ashland.news. “I would say that it’s more unpredictable than the 2020 enrollment, when we didn’t know if students were going to come or not.”

Shillam shared that it took a SOU faculty member, whose name she didn’t share, five months to process the aid application for their child, who is attending another university.

“This is a person who is skilled in knowing how to navigate the (FAFSA) system,” Shillam said. “So when you think about the impact of that scenario on families who don’t know how to navigate higher education, who have never filled out a FAFSA before ….

“That is just such a profound impact,” she added.

The rollout of the FAFSA application process has personally affected SOU President Rick Bailey’s family, as well, in addition to thousands across the country. In late August, Bailey said his nephew had not yet heard back about getting aid to attend a university in Florida. Bailey helped him file the application.

“His semester already started and he hasn’t gotten a decision back on (aid),” Bailey said, as of late August. 

“I think there are a lot of students in that boat,” Bailey added.

“The thing that makes this current situation unique is that, even though it was out of our control, just like COVID, the federal government has not made amends for that … they haven’t put an influx of federal dollars to mitigate the issues.”

Matt Stillman, assistant vice president for enrollment management and university registrar, told Ashland.news in August, “It’s been a bit of a trainwreck, honestly.” 

NPR reported that the new FAFSA form was released months behind schedule, setting colleges scrambling to get financial aid packages out in time.  

According to NPR, the released form included a mistake that would have cost students $1.8 billion in federal student aid. The Education Department said in January it would fix the issue – but the fix only compounded the delays in sending student’s FAFSA data to schools, according to NPR. A technical issue with the form also meant many non-citizens, or children of non-citizens, could not fill it out, the news organization reported.

Stillman is seeing the impacts to SOU from the delayed rollout of the FAFSA changes in real time. He said SOU continues to receive FAFSAs past their original deadline of March 1, Stillman said in a Zoom interview, and delays in processing continue to pile up.

“It wasn’t implemented properly to begin with,” Stillman said. “The solutions that were provided weren’t really solutions, we still have a variety of things that haven’t been fully fixed. 

Stillman in August said that the university still didn’t have a fully, completely fixed system in terms of students being able to correct errors on their FAFSA forms.

He noted that normally incoming students would be encouraged to submit their FAFSA in spring.

“Throw every date and deadline out the window this year with the FAFSA rollout,” Stillman said. “Part of the mess is that … it really throws the entire cadence for how things typically flow completely off. Not only do we have nationally fewer students filing FAFSA, but we have students filing FAFSA later and with a lot higher error rate, so it’s not … just one aspect of things, but it’s a lot of different things congealing together.”

Shillam, who started as provost and executive vice president earlier this year (her title changed from vice president of Academic and Student Affairs to executive vice president on Sept. 1), oversees enrollment and admissions. 

“Last year, we had pre-pandemic enrollment again, so we had an absolute stellar year, and we had no reason to anticipate that we wouldn’t have that level of continued enrollment again,” Shillam told Ashland.news in a phone interview. “We budgeted for a 1% decline in student credit hours, but we were pretty confident we were going to stay strong, and then as the rollout of the FAFSA kept getting postponed, kept getting delayed, there kept being more and more problems, it started to really become apparent how much that dysfunctional process was impacting our enrollment.”

Shillam, a self-described first-generation college student herself, shared concerns about first generation students who could be disproportionately affected.

She said the goal of the U.S. Department of Education was to improve the FAFSA application process. The outcome has been anything but an improvement.

“The magnitude of dysfunction — It was crippling to many institutions,” Shillam said.

Bailey emphasized the struggles are not over, though the university has a plan to overcome them.

“We haven’t had the opportunity to reach out to the students in the way we normally would,” Bailey said.

“I think it’s safe to say it is not going to be a single year phenomenon,” Bailey added. “I think it is something that probably will have a tail attached to it. I think all of us are optimistic about this not being as damaging next year as it was this year, but at the same time, because we have to think about the fiscal health of the institution, what is that ripple effect and what do we need to do as an institution to make sure that we are still financially sound.”

Bailey emphasized a “one-time safety net” at the university’s disposal: the sale of surplus properties adjacent to campus. In an interview with Ashland.news in late August, he said SOU still needs to communicate with the city of Ashland on zoning surrounding the properties, but that should be completed by October. 

“If there’s one thing we learned from SOU Forward and that entire process, it is that we should never rely on one-time funding to solve recurring or structural fiscal challenges, because, otherwise, that just evaporates and all you’re really doing is kicking the can down the road and then, likely, it’ll be even harder when you finally have to address it and don’t have a choice,” Bailey said in an interview with Ashland.news in August.

He declined to comment on the specifics of the individual properties until then, but said the sum total of sales would likely amount to much more than $2.7 million. The SOU Board of Trustees are slated to finalize details relating to the properties at their Oct. board meeting, which is open to the public.

 “The market value of these properties also will create an opportunity to strengthen our reserves overall,” Bailey said in a news release issued by the university in August. “But we must keep a close eye on our 2026 enrollment numbers to ensure that we are not using these one-time dollars to solve recurring challenges.”

The Board of Trustees previously approved the sale of the properties to assist with fiscal challenges. 

Three-fold approach to address late FAFSA rollout

Bailey said SOU’s approach will be three-fold, including exploring property sales around the periphery of the institution to help fill the fiscal gap for the current fiscal year.

“Our (SOU) Board of Trustees pre-approved some of those sales over the last few years, so the good news is, that’s already been something (that has been) addressed,” he said, “but there may be updates to that that require board approval. If so, that will likely be on the board agenda in October.”

The second goal of SOU’s approach is to explore university-owned properties that don’t have future development plans and that could also be put up for sale, the proceeds from which would go toward the university’s reserves to improve its long-term, fiscal position, according to Bailey.

Lastly, Bailey said SOU will be “very aggressive” at monitoring the followup to the current fiscal year to ensure that the effects of the FAFSA rollout aren’t masking some other structural problem, “so that we are making sound decisions for fiscal year 2026 and 2027.”

“It is not our intention to do any kind of structural downsizing for FY (fiscal year) 2025, for several reasons,” Bailey said, “One, because there’s a fairly strong argument to say that the late FAFSA rollout from the federal government – it’s an anomaly. Two, is that our faculty and staff right now … are operating at full speed right now. I want to be very careful about any structural changes that make it even more difficult for them. And third … we owe it to ourselves to make sure … that we have the proper personnel footprint to be of service to our students.”

For Stillman, predictions for the number of students on campus can generally be made within one or two tenths of a percentage. That is currently not the case.

“If you change all the variables in one year, it makes that prediction nearly impossible,” Stillman said. “It was honestly easier for us at the end of Covid to predict enrollment than it is right now. We have nothing to compare this year’s cycle to, like historically speaking.

“It literally takes everything that we know we can utilize to predict things and it’s pretty much out the window right now,” he added.

Stillman emphasized that, not only will there be fewer FAFSAs filed, but more students may file a FAFSA later, which may cause further delays.

On top of that, universities will lose out on key information they derive from FAFSAs.

“We get a lot of data when students file FAFSAs,” Stillman said. “A lot of times, the first time we will know about a student is when they file the FAFSA.”

Universities generally receive that data early on so they can help a student navigate their college experience.

“If we’re not getting that (data) in our normal timing, and we’re getting it way, way, way later, we’re potentially not getting that student’s information at all,” Stillman said. “It throws the entire recruitment cycle off-kilter.

“You have a much higher proportion of students who are going to opt out,” he added. “It’s that unholy cocktail combination of fewer students engaging in the process at all, and if they are engaging in the process, they’re engaging in the process later … so it just throws the continuum off.”

SOU administrators to address campus on FAFSA issue on Sept. 19

Bailey said he will discuss the topic in more detail at SOU’s Welcome Breakfast, open only to university staff, on Sept. 19 at the university.

“If there’s a single message, it is to reassure our campus community that we will take the necessary steps to mitigate the effects of this FAFSA issue that was out of our control, and at the same time, commit ourselves to long-term fiscal stability, and make sure that we are not making current decisions that have future challenging implications,” Bailey said.

As fall term quickly approaches at SOU and colleges and universities across the country, many students nationally are considering a gap year, forgoing college or making enrollment decisions later than usual due to the late rollout of financial aid across the country, however, Bailey hopes attending SOU is still an option on the table for prospective students.

“It is not too late to join us for the fall,” Bailey told Ashland.news. “If you are unsure, I would highly encourage people to reach out to our financial aid office.”

Despite foreseeing this as an issue that extends beyond the current fiscal year, Bailey remains optimistic about the freshman class that will start classes Sept. 27.

“I think all of us are optimistic about this not being as damaging next year as it was this year,” he said.

“It’s not so acute that we’re only going to have half the students. We’re still going to have a fairly large group of students. I think that when those students come, I’m confident that they’re going to be successful.”

Shillam also expressed optimism as the university moves forward.

“Still, we are persevering,” she said. “We still are a strong university. We still have growth in our majors and programs.”

What is your experience this year in filing the FAFSA? Did it work for you or did you struggle to file it? Are you still trying to file it and having issues? Let us know! Ashland.news. Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth hollyd@ashland.news.