Carlos Sanchez is the executive director of Casa Latina, a new bilingual college program at Davenport University that caters to students exactly like the one Sanchez was 25 years ago when he immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, from Mexico City.

Sanchez hopes the program will help many highly trained or qualified people who are underemployed because they believe their English isn’t good enough to earn a college degree.

After the shaky rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid form, Anthony Jones and his team at Bethune-Cookman University immediately went to the drawing board to create a strategy to educate students on the changes and delays. Now, they’re sending emails. They’re holding webinars. They’re on call for questions.

Bethune-Cookman’s extra efforts mirror those of other Historically Black Colleges and Universities nationwide as they navigate the new FAFSA. HBCUs, which educate almost a fifth of Black college graduates, need the FAFSA to work: More than 70 percent of the students attending HBCUs are eligible for Pell Grants, which are reserved for those from low-income families.

Nia Dyer’s dream of graduating college next year is on the line. She’s one of hundreds of students receiving state aid to pay for college through the Fostering Independence Grant program—the first of its kind in the nation to cover not only tuition but the full cost of atttending college for Minnesotans who have been in foster care.

But 40 percent of recipients in the FIG program are in danger of losing their funding next year because of a $5 million budget shortfall. For students like Dyer, who started receiving FIG last fall, that means her dream of graduating and starting a career in advocacy might be just that: a dream.