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Over half of all financial aid professionals are likely to seek employment in a new sector within the next year, according to a new report from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Advisors (NASFAA).
The report found the most common reason for wanting to change jobs was “pay and workforce flexibility.”
“If we’ve learned anything from this last year, it’s just how critical financial aid administrators are to ensuring students can access postsecondary education,” NASFAA president Justin Draeger wrote in a statement. “It’s equally vital they are recognized and fairly compensated for that work.”
The news comes after a grueling year for financial aid officers, who have borne the brunt of the Department of Education’s disastrous rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid form.
But burnout has been on the rise in the financial aid community for years now, and colleges have been struggling to overcome staffing shortages because of it. In 2022 another survey from NASFAA found that 80 percent of institutions were concerned about their financial aid offices’ ability to remain “administratively capable” due to high turnover.
Those staffing issues were one of the driving forces behind a $50 million assistance plan put forth by the Department of Education in February to help under-resourced institutions deal with the workload imposed by the delayed FAFSA.
