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Emmerson Winfrey
Free Application for Federal Student Aid has implemented a new Student Aid Index system to calculate college student loans which will no longer provide increased financial aid for families with multiple children in college. This new system will go into effect in the 2024-2025 school year.
Under the previous calculation formula — Expected Family Contribution — the amount a family was calculated to be able to pay was cut in half depending on how many kids they had in college at the same time. For example, a family who could pay $10,000 in tuition, if they have a second child enter college while the first is still in it, that amount would be cut to $5,000 for both students. With the new rules, all children will receive the same aid, regardless of how many siblings they have in college.
About one-third of U.S. college students also have a sibling in college, according to Brookings.edu. Many families at East make up this one-third, including the Lindbergs. The family has eight kids, five of whom will be in college at the same time.
“I absolutely think that the qualification of [aid for multiple children in college] needs to be rethought,” The father Derek Lindberg said. “For anyone in that situation, unless you’re just independently wealthy, five college tuitions at one time is scary.”
One reason for this change is as college tuition prices have increased, many families budget and find ways to afford it. FAFSA claims this makes it unfair to give more aid to families with multiple kids in college at once but not to families with multiple children further apart, according to The New York Times.
The new system is aimed to simplify the process of applying and includes the benefit of hiding some of a family’s income from the calculation — causing their income to appear lower and lead to an increased eligibility for grants.
But for students like junior Anna Joyce, the changes will cause more harm than good. Joyce will be in college at the same time as her brother and says the change has added stress to her college choice and post-college debt plans.
“It will definitely affect how my family looks at money and colleges,” Joyce said. “It’ll also change how we look at our future and what we have to work towards-debt wise.”
At least 12 of Kansas City’s Target-based CVS locations closed Sept. 21 and 22 due to mass numbers of pharmacists calling in sick as a form of strike.
The reason behind this is to protest recent corporate decisions within the company. These include cutting the number of hours a week a pharmacist can have a technician — a pharmacist’s assistant — on hand, according to The Kansas City Star. The stores are open 64 hours per week and are only allowed a technician for 20 of those hours, meaning pharmacists are filling prescriptions, taking calls, talking to doctors or caring for walk-ups with no help.
Many CVS’s located within Targets are also mandating workers to go help at stand-alone CVS locations. The pharmacist’s increased load of work has led to more errors.
Angela Summers*, a worker at one of the closed stores believes this issue should be an easy fix.
“The workers are simply protesting unfair working conditions,” Summers said. “They’re not asking for anything that would put the company out.”
For Target location employees, being pulled to other stores can look like driving all the way to Columbia, Missouri where they’re months behind in vaccines and prescriptions. Since the Target locations are more successful than stand-alones these movements are to help backed up stores get caught up.
Some locations report having one pharmacist working an entire store, according to KCTV5.
The pharmacists have no intention of ending their strike until the issues are fixed. All closed locations reopened on the 23, Amy Thibault, a spokesperson for CVS, told Supermarket News as she did not respond to our request to comment.
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