Financial-aid issues leave colleges and students in limbo

Good morning. It's Wednesday, February 14th. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shumita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, why a crucial Palestinian aid agency is in crisis. How an update to the college financial aid process led to some chaos. And celebrating yourself this Valentine's Day.

But first, let's take a quick look at a few major stories in the news. Starting in the Middle East, where officials from Israel, Egypt, Qatar, and the United States met in Cairo yesterday to negotiate a possible second ceasefire in Gaza. The plan would pause fighting there for up to six weeks and involve another swap of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages. Initial conversations ended without a breakthrough.

But I'm encouraged Israeli leaders to keep working to achieve the deal. The United States will do everything possible to make it happen.

Now to New York, where Democrat Tom Swasey won a snowy special election in the state's 3rd congressional district yesterday. This was the seat previously held by Republican Congressman George Santos. Swasey defeated his Republican opponent, Mazi Pilip, in a race that was seen as a referendum on national political issues like immigration. Swasey's victory narrows the Republican majority in the House. Now Speaker Mike Johnson could only afford to lose two Republican votes on any partisan bill.

take down the San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs will have their victory parade today. The main UN agency tasked with providing aid to Palestinians is running out of money. Major donor countries, including the U.S., cut funding to UNRWA

after Israel accused a dozen of the organization's 13,000 staff members of taking part in the Hamas attacks on October 7th. Experts say, so far, the Israeli allegations are unverified, and the UN says Israel has yet to share its intelligence with them. The agency's commissioner fired the accused employees, but he admitted that he did so without due process. The New York Times reports that several employees had been fired or left the agency in the past due to links to Hamas.

UNRWA is the backbone of all humanitarian response in Gaza. I appeal to all member states to guarantee the continuity of UNRWA's life-saving work.

The group's full name is: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. It was established in 1949 as a way to help hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced after Israel's founding. In this current crisis, it has been the lead agency providing food, water, shelter, and other emergency aid. And it's provided these basic needs for decades for Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.

UNRWA is self-perpetuating. It is self-perpetuating also in its desire to keep alive the Palestinian refugee issue. And we need to get other UN agencies and other aid agencies replacing UNRWA if we're going to solve the problem of Gaza.

But UNRWA's Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini says there is no other aid agency ready to step in. And he says it's not just about providing emergency help during the current war. He argues that UNRWA is the only group poised to offer essential services and some stability after, whenever that moment of transition comes.

We have half a million girls and boys deeply traumatized that we urgently need to bring back into an education system. And this will not be provided by an emerging local administration. There is absolutely no other U.N. agency or I.N.G.O.s which have been tasked over the last few decades to provide government-like services like education to hundreds of thousands of children.

Lazzarini said if funding doesn't resume soon,

UNRWA could be forced to shut down their operations by the end of the month. There have been major issues in the past few weeks with FAFSA, the main form aspiring college students need to fill out to calculate their financial aid packages.

More than 17 million students file for aid every year through FAFSA, or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. But the latest version has been riddled with problems. It all started when Congress mandated that FAFSA revamp its system to make it easier for people to apply. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel is a higher education reporter with The Washington Post. She told us the new streamlined FAFSA form was supposed to soft launch at the end of 2023.

So December 30th rolls around, and the form goes live really quickly, but it's only available for a couple of hours. And parents were livid because many of the ones, especially the ones I spoke with, were waiting hours trying to get into this form. And the next day, they're still waiting hours. New Year's Day, they're waiting hours. And they're just getting error messages or being told to hold tight in a waiting room.

Finally, the forum went live in January, but with a lot of issues. As a result, parents, students, and colleges haven't been able to get much needed financial aid information. Some schools have faced no choice but to push back the traditional May 1st deadline that students need to commit to a university by. What's more, Douglas-Gabriel reports that many people who already completed the new FAFSA will likely receive an incorrect estimate for aid.

And so now we're in February and there are a lot of students who are in this situation worrying, will I be able to submit this form? And if so, will it get to the schools that I'm looking at in time to receive a clearer picture of what I'll actually have to pay for college and what support I'll get?

Currently enrolled college students are impacted as well. They use FAFSA to find out what kind of aid they qualify for year to year. Douglas-Gabriel told us about Leah, the mom of a student in Texas.

She is a woman who is helping her husband go through chemotherapy, helping to keep her household in order and wanting to make sure that her oldest daughter, who's enrolled in a public institution in Texas is able to remain enrolled. And, you know, in talking to Leah, it's hard not to have your eyes water up a little bit because you can sense her fear of not being able to help her daughter and her daughter having to drop out.

Yesterday, the Department of Education announced new measures to help address these problems. They say they're doing everything they can to work on them quickly, but also that Congress mandated the changes to the FAFSA without giving them adequate funding to support them. Meanwhile, colleges are bracing for more hiccups. And students tell "The Washington Post" they're worried that their dream schools might be slipping out of reach.

It's unfortunate, and I feel for parents who are feeling this pressure and this stress of not being able to help their children with one of the most critical decisions of their life, and it's difficult.

It's a difficult time.

Finally, today is Valentine's Day. If you were planning to get someone you love a gift and you haven't yet, you can thank me for that reminder. But also, have you ever considered just treating yourself?

"The Wall Street Journal" reports how more and more people are using the holiday to celebrate themselves and buying gifts that say, "I love me." We live in a country, after all, where nearly half of people are not married and where, according to Pew, most single people say they aren't actively looking for a partner. Which is why the journal says retailers, both large and small, have been adjusting to this growing trend of self-indulgence.

And others say it's a nice way to avoid receiving yet another pair of itchy socks from a well-meaning partner. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the news app right now, we've got a narrated article coming up from "The Atlantic." Silicon Valley startups are building their own societies and designing them to their liking. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.