Recent numbers show that fewer than five million students have submitted the 2024-25 FAFSA form so far while, in previous years, typically 17 million students submitted a FAFSA form. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that students get all of the financial aid to which they’re entitled and we all need to play a role in getting it done.

The FAFSA mess has significant implications for the future of this country. Students from working class families will not likely be able to attend college next year if they do not file a FAFSA because that is the key to need-based aid, both institutional and federal (including the very important Pell grants).

This cohort will also be a group that experienced significant remote learning during the pandemic, and we know that many have suffered educationally and emotionally.

We also know that for most students, college is the key to higher earnings, increased job security, and better health outcomes.

So what should be done? I suggest a campaign in our communities to galvanize students and their families to file their FAFSAs. Perhaps not the most glamorous of causes, it is certainly one that could draw support from all parts of the political spectrum. Everyone can agree that young people should have all the information and resources available to them as possible as they and their families make critical decisions like whether or where to attend college.

Universities and colleges must be the first to step up to support our current and future students during this confusing and challenging time.

At Pace University, we’ve been working for years to prepare ourselves and our community for this change and have dramatically increased those efforts in the past few months. Regular and thorough communications have been provided to our current and prospective students about the changes and what they are required to do.

We’ve also identified many of the specific areas of difficulty that many students and families have been encountering and provided webinars with guidance on how to successfully navigate them. Finally, we’ve put our money where our mouth is and provided a $1,500 award to incoming freshman students who complete their FAFSA before March 15. These communal and individual supports have gone a long way toward increasing our prospective and current students’ filings.

One of the best positioned institutions to reach young people are their high schools. Teachers, guidance counselors, and principals not only have access to students and their families but also their trust that they are looking out for our young people’s best interests.

Daily reminders, workshops, and one-on-one advisements are all avenues for millions more FAFSA applications being submitted. Superintendents and school systems should make sure that high schools have all of the resources that they need to inform and support their students during this challenging period.

There are many other trusted institutions that can provide information and guidance. Community centers, after school groups, and religious organizations are all critical resources for their constituencies for services and information.

The federal government should work with these organizations to provide them with resources to assist students and their families with filing their FAFSAs. For families without available access to technology, for whom the FAFSA is particularly critical, these community resources could be invaluable in providing it. 

Finally, there is still much that the federal government can do to increase the number of FAFSA applications that have been filed. All of the institutions I previously mentioned have limited resources to do the work that they already do and need the federal government to help them help our students.

In addition to an information campaign about the importance of filing the FAFSA, the federal government needs to actively partner with institutions of higher education, high schools, and community organizations to share information and provide support and guidance. 

However we arrived at today’s challenges, it is in everyone’s shared interest to work together and help as many students and families submit their FAFSA as possible. That you can work hard and achieve your goals, no matter your background, is a fundamental part of the American dream and affordable access to higher education is a critical piece of that.

It is only through our collective efforts that we’ll achieve this goal and make sure all of our students and families have the information and resources that they need and deserve.

Krislov is president of Pace University.

That’s why I’m calling on all of the colleges and universities across New York State to step up and ensure everyone in their communities — students, faculty and staff — are vaccinated. That means issuing similar requirements, and it also means more outreach and education to help address the concerns of the hesitant and make sure everyone has access.

It’s an achievable goal. In fact, Rhode Island became the first U.S. state in which every single college or university will require its students to come to campus for the fall semester vaccinated.

I don’t say this often, but it’s time for New York to proudly become No. 2.

We’re well-positioned to do it. New Yorkers saw the awful impact of COVID early on, and we were quick to support the necessary shutdown measures that suppressed its spread. Led by Gov. Cuomo, we successfully brought the virus under control last summer, well before the vaccines arrived, and we responsibly avoided the deadly spike of last winter.

Then, when the vaccines got here, millions of New Yorkers rushed to get inoculated. I remember well the friendly, optimistic feeling at “Javax” — the state-run mass vaccination site at the Javits Center — shared by citizens and National Guard soldiers, medical professionals and helpful volunteers, even those post-shot pianists.

We proved that New York has the resources, the science and the will to take on COVID.

But now our state, like our country, is in a dangerous place. The delta variant is rampaging, starting to drive back up infection numbers that had fallen. Hospitalization rates in our state remain low, because the vaccines work. But we know that not enough people have been vaccinated, that non-vaccination rates remain high among some vulnerable communities, and that college-aged people are lagging their elders in vaccination rates.

Many of New York’s colleges and universities have already issued vaccine requirements, at least for their students. The sprawling SUNY and CUNY systems will require vaccination. Some 52 private colleges and universities in the state have announced student mandates, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. But that’s only a fraction of the private institutions in the state. (Rhode Island had a leg up: It’s home to only 11 colleges or universities.)

At Pace University, where I’m president, we announced in April that all our students will be required to be vaccinated for the fall semester, and in June we extended that requirement to faculty and staff. (Our requirement, like those elsewhere, allows for medical and religious exemptions.)

Overall, 74% of New York adults have received at least one dose of vaccine, and 68% are fully vaccinated. But the numbers are less impressive among the college-aged. Statewide, only about 55% of those aged 16 to 25 have received one dose, and only about 49% are fully vaccinated.

Colleges and universities have a unique role as educators, as community leaders, and frankly as good neighbors to help ensure everyone around us is protected.

We also simply want to get back to normal life. After more than a year of drastic disruption, we are now planning for a near-normal fall semester. We’re excited to have our students back on campus, our classrooms full, our campuses bustling with activity. But we’ll only be able to do that when we know our communities will be safe.

We want to get back to in-person learning and in-person living, to working together, eating together, socializing together. We want to bring back college sports. We want to bring back big, celebratory commencements. We want to do what we always do: Help transform young people’s lives through the power of a college education. But for that to happen, they need to stay healthy. We need to make sure they’re vaccinated.

Krislov is president of Pace University.

DACA, established in 2012, protects undocumented young people brought to the United States as children by their parents, once they’re applied for Dreamer status and proved that they’ve committed no serious crimes, lived here for at least five years and met several other criteria, including that they are in school, have earned a high-school diploma or G.E.D. or were honorably discharged from the military.

In other words, DACA protects hard-working, law-abiding, ambitious young people. They’ve grown up here, in the only country they’ve known, and become valued parts of communities across the country. Many of them are now attending college, including the two New York schools where we serve as presidents. We need them in our campus communities, and our country needs them. We’re proud to have DACA students in our classrooms.

Our schools do not require DACA students to report their status, so we only know those who have chosen to self-identify.

At Fordham, DACA students’ classmates may not know who they are, but they valued deeply the students’ presence on campus, and bitterly opposed what they saw as their unjust treatment by the administration. When DACA was rescinded, Fordham students responded immediately with postcard and phone campaigns to leadership in Congress in support of the DREAM Act. As a Jesuit institution, Fordham believes in educating men and women for others. Therefore, care for DACA students is central to the university’s mission.

At Pace, the ranks of DACA students have included Lisdy Contreras-Giron, who graduated a year ago. She’s a remarkable young woman, who worked hard as a student while also working several jobs to pay for her education. (Dreamers are not eligible for federal financial aid programs.) She interned one summer for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and another for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Today she’s a paralegal, preparing to enroll in law school to pursue her dream of becoming a criminal defense attorney.

These are the kinds of students our campuses need more of.

As educators, we know that the key to our nation’s future is an ever-increasing supply of smart, talented, motivated workers. We strive for diversity in our classrooms and residence halls, because we know success in an increasingly integrated world is dependent on introducing a wide variety of experiences and perspectives, and knowing how to work together across cultures and backgrounds. This is how our workers will bring new ideas and innovations to our economy, and how our companies will stay competitive in our globalized world.

DACA students improve our classrooms, and this decision sends a strong signal reaffirming what we’ve always known: That all students, including the Dreamers, deserve a place in our communities and on our campuses.

Father McShane is the president of Fordham University. Krislov is the president of Pace University.

The affirmative action opponents who brought the suit have announced their intent to appeal Judge Burroughs’ decision, but there’s reason to doubt it will make its way to the Supreme Court. The high court typically hears cases in which it must resolve a conflict between different circuit courts. Because the precedent is clear, there is no circuit conflict. She found, like the Supreme Court has in recent decisions, that student body diversity is a compelling interest and that Harvard’s program was narrowly tailored to accomplish that goal.

But regardless of what today’s Supreme Court might do, I would argue that it’s time for us to move beyond the decades-old arguments about the merits of affirmative action programs. The most salient point about these programs, I believe, was made by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the court in the 2003 University of Michigan Grutter decision, of which I was a part: “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry,” she wrote, “it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”

So let’s focus on how we can create a path to leadership that is visibly open to all individuals.

The reality today is that affirmative action in admissions is a factor at only a small number of America’s colleges and for a smaller number of America’s college students. Almost exclusively, those are the country’s most selective institutions, and even there, many fewer report considering race in admissions than did a decade ago.

Our great challenge is to ensure that qualified students of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply for college and ready for the experience, so that they’ll succeed once they’re there. Which means we need well-designed early-college programs, proactive college counselors, especially in our underserved communities, after-school programs, and summer programs. This includes mentorship, especially for first-generation college families. This includes colleges working with high schools and families to help students navigate the application admissions and aid process. This means casting a wide net for recruitment and outreach. And this means corporate, government and philanthropic support for all of these initiatives, because these students represent the future for these organizations.

As our country’s population becomes more diverse, we need to recognize young people from diverse backgrounds as an extraordinary talent pool that will play an indisputable role in America’s continuing leadership. I now lead one of the more socioeconomically and racially diverse private universities in the country, Pace University, and I can tell you we relearn every fall that our outstanding students don’t just bring different backgrounds and cultures to our campus, they also bring vibrancy and academic ambition to their classrooms.

Colleges and universities also need to think creatively about what they can do to ensure students have academic support. They should invest in their local K–12 schools, which is one of the many reasons we created Pace High School in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools. Community colleges and universities need to collaborate to build new pathways for talented students to succeed.

And employers, who recognize the value of a diverse workforce, should redouble their efforts to recruit at all colleges to find all talented potential employees.

Ultimately, the challenge facing us is to figure out how to prepare and support students of all backgrounds. By focusing on proactively building pathways for all talented students, we can achieve our real goal: creating opportunities for all students of all backgrounds at all our colleges and universities.

Krislov, the president of Pace University, was vice president and general counsel of the University of Michigan in 2003, when the Supreme Court upheld the importance of student body diversity in Grutter vs. Bollinger.