El Camino College students have to wait two hours and thirty minutes to speak with someone at the Financial Aid Office.

While El Camino isn’t the only school with long wait times, its wait time is longer than other community colleges in the state.

According to a Union survey at Riverside City College, the wait time is one hour and 30 minutes. At Palomar College and Cerritos College, the wait time is one hour. Each of the colleges mentioned has 20,000 or more students.

There shouldn’t be a reason why students at ECC have to wait much longer compared to other schools in the state.

Many students don’t have the luxury of waiting that long to speak to a real person and very few people can wait that long.

Students not receiving help with financial aid in adequate time could result in the student potentially dropping out of college.

The wait times are so long that the Financial Aid Office recommends students not to call them due to the limited number of staff. The Financial Aid Office advises students to visit their office in person at the Student Services Building or by Zoom.

The Financial Aid Office lists its in-person hours of operation from Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and online hours of operation last from Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Fraud has been one of the reasons why phone wait times have gotten so long. The process of authenticating people’s identities takes away time from the Financial Aid Office to help real students.

The Financial Aid Office currently has six full-time employees, two part-time employees, and three student workers. In the near future, the Financial Aid Office will hire three more students.

On an average day the Financial Aid Office sees about 200-250 students each day. At the beginning of an academic year, the number rises to 500 students a day.

The editorial board applauds the people who work at the Financial Aid Office which serves more than 20,000 students at El Camino. However, this is a low number of employees that is meant to provide financial aid services to over 20,000 students.

It would be wise for the college to provide additional support to the Financial Aid Office by hiring more people to fill up the vacant positions as financial aid helps bring in a lot of money to the college.

According to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, in the 2023 to 2024 academic school year, 15,372 El Camino students received $61,048,750 from California College Promise Grants, Pell Grants, scholarships and other financial aid services.

The money brought in through financial aid has a trickle down effect on the college as students spend the money at El Camino.

Even though the college is currently in a budget crisis, El Camino needs to be willing to spend money in order to make money.