The U.S. Department of Education announced on Wednesday that the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, would be available to students “by December 31,” three months later than usual.
Most everyone in the college-access trenches has long suspected that the form wouldn’t be online until the very end of the year (there’s a federal statutory requirement that it be there by January 1, 2024). But the real news on Wednesday was an unpleasant surprise: Colleges won’t receive applicants’ FAFSA data right away — possibly not until the end of January, according to the department’s updated timeline. And that will surely push back the delivery of aid offers to many students.
Those delays will pose challenges to applicants, college counselors, and financial-aid officers during an enrollment cycle that’s already shaping up to be a bear. Although the streamlined FAFSA has been widely praised, its delayed debut represents a Maalox moment.
In a written statement on Wednesday, Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, expressed optimism that the simplified FAFSA would benefit millions of students and families. But, he said, “while it’s true that ED [the Education Department] may have met the letter of the law by opening the FAFSA by December 31, any significant delays in delivering applicant data to schools would fall short of the spirit of the law, leaving the most vulnerable student populations in limbo as they wait for the financial-aid information they need to make vital college-going decisions. We urge our federal partners to do all they can to provide applicant data to institutions as quickly as possible, and to clearly communicate with schools as soon as updates are available.”
Although applicants who complete the FAFSA will get an email indicating whether they are eligible for a federal Pell Grant and estimating how much aid they would receive, colleges won’t start receiving Institutional Student Information Records, or ISIRs, until later in January. (Previously, institutions typically received that information within three to five days after students completed the FAFSA.)
In a blog post on Wednesday, Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Attainment Network, described how one delay would probably beget others: After ISIRs are received, “we anticipate that institutions of higher education will then need multiple weeks to load the data, test systems, and begin to generate financial-aid offers, likely reaching students in mid- to late-February at the earliest.”
The Education Department, which expects FAFSA applications to peak in late January and early February, also said that the processing of institutional FAFSA corrections and of paper FAFSAs won’t begin until February. All of those delays, Cook said, “will require us to work within an even-more-compressed timeline that could result in lower FAFSA-completion and college-enrollment rates than in previous years. Those states with FAFSA completion as a high-school graduation requirement will be operating under immense pressure to support students in a timely manner and ensure all requirements are met.”
Despite all the anticipated headaches in this financial-aid cycle, it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture. In a news release on Wednesday, the Education Department described the forthcoming changes in the FAFSA and aid-eligibility formulas as the “most ambitious and significant redesign” of the federal-aid process since the Reagan era. The new FAFSA, for instance, will enable families to securely transfer their federal tax data from the Internal Revenue Service, simplifying the act of applying for federal aid. That’s just one example of several changes that college-access advocates have long pushed for.
Moreover, the department said, the new FAFSA will help 610,000 more low-income applicants receive Pell Grants — and allow 1.5 million more students to qualify for the maximum award. (You can see a state-by-state breakdown here.) “When students and families fill out the better FAFSA form,” Miguel A. Cardona, the U.S. secretary of education, said in a written statement, “they will find that applying for college financial aid is simpler, easier, and faster than ever before.”
But the months ahead won’t be simple or easy for the folks who help steer students through the federal-aid process. Ditto for the financial-aid staffs navigating FAFSA changes and a truncated timeline.
And time spent distributing aid offers, Draeger said, doesn’t take into account “the time aid administrators will spend examining the many special circumstances students face, from those who require personalized counseling, financial-aid appeals, FAFSA corrections, professional judgments and considerations, or serving other populations that need one-on-one assistance.”
Until FAFSA data reaches colleges, the wheels of this crucial process can’t turn.
“Every day matters,” Draeger said.
