The Education Department (ED) is fixing an error in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which means colleges won’t get student’s FAFSA applications until early March. The FAFSA was updated this year to give students an easier, more streamlined application process, but this error isn’t the first time the 2024 FAFSA got delayed. While the FAFSA is usually released on Oct. 1, it wasn’t released until Dec. 31, 2023. For students who completed the FAFSA this January and are relying on financial aid to decide where to go to college, this recent announcement from the ED is not ideal.
The ED announced the FAFSA delay on Jan. 30, saying it was to fix a mistake that almost deprived students of $1.8 billion in federal aid. The Washington Post reported in December 2023 that a very important formula used in the new FAFSA was wrong. The math used to calculate aid eligibility based on family income didn’t adjust for inflation. This would have disproportionately impacted low-income students, many of whom need this financial aid to attend college.
In a statement made on Jan. 30, the U.S. Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal said, “Updating our calculations will help students qualify for as much financial aid as possible. Thank you to the financial aid advisers, college counselors, and many others helping us put students first.”
Advocate groups pushed for a correction in the form as early as Oct. 2023, but the ED originally said it wouldn’t update the form until next year because of “timing and data constraints.” Inflation jumped over the past few years, and not adjusting for this means students appear to have more family income than they actually do. Besides this resulting in lower financial aid than expected for many students, it would also mean hundreds of thousands of students wouldn’t get the Pell Grant, aid money that doesn’t have to be repaid.
The ED is soft-launching the new FAFSA, which means students going to college for the 2024-2025 year are the test subjects. There’s an alert page continuously being updated with problems students are encountering on the updated application. Despite the hiccups, the Congress-mandated changes to the FAFSA make things a lot easier on students and families, especially first-time FAFSA users. The FAFSA application is now shorter and more understandable for students. It takes less time to fill out, which can encourage more students to apply for college. There are also 610,000 more federal Pell Grants available for low-income students.
While the ED originally said it wouldn’t update the mistake, a spokesperson for the Department said they were assessing what to do about it earlier this month. Then, the ED’s Jan. 30 announcement that colleges won’t receive applicants’ forms for another several weeks dropped on the same day colleges were expecting to receive them.
On Oct. 30, The President of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators Justin Draeger said, “These continued delays, communicated at the last minute, threaten to harm the very students and families that federal student aid is intended to help.” Draeger also said in an earlier statement on Oct. 23 that adjusting the formula is “the right thing to do,” although it “should have been done from the beginning.”
As of Jan. 30, 3.1 million people successfully applied using the new FAFSA. However, it’s only after the FAFSA is submitted to colleges that students receive information about how much financial aid they get. The delays mean college financial aid offices will have to work double-time to get financial aid packages out in a timely manner. Colleges are also going through a learning curve with the new form.
According to a statement Draeger made to NPR, students likely won’t get their financial aid information until April, giving them less time to decide where they want to go to college. Since many FAFSA-users rely on the aid colleges award them, some financial aid administrators and colleges worry this mistake will dictate whether some students make it to college this year.