Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona announced on Monday a federal initiative to help colleges process the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. But the plan does not mention fixes for the technical problems that are still preventing many families from completing the all-important application more than a month after it became available.
The No. 1 thing the U.S. Department of Education should do is to fix the bugs.
During a call with reporters, Secretary Cardona described the FAFSA College Support Strategy. First, he said, the department will deploy federal financial-aid experts to under-resourced campuses — including historically Black institutions and tribal colleges — to “ensure they have the tools and the information needed to process financial-aid packages, to understand the steps they need to take to prepare, and to provide direct on-the-ground support.” Those experts will travel to institutions for site visits and provide virtual or in person consultations, according to a summary of the initiative.
The department also plans to create a “concierge service” within the Federal Student Aid office, known as FSA, that will put colleges in direct contact with federal-aid experts, including former financial-aid officials, who can provide personalized support and recommend resources.
Secretary Cardona said the department would also direct up to $50 million in federal funding to nonprofit organizations that will support financial-aid offices by providing additional staffing to help ensure that campus aid-processing systems are ready while assisting with staff training and the development of aid packages. The federal funding, to be administered by the Educational Credit Management Corporation, will go to nonprofit groups, including the National Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators, or NASFAA, with expertise in financial-aid support and services.
Finally, Secretary Cardona said the department will start releasing test versions of Institutional Student Information Records, or ISIRs — essentially, college-facing FAFSA data — within the next two weeks, enabling colleges to prepare their systems for assembling aid offers. “This FAFSA support strategy will mean more personnel and more resources to help students and institutions make the most of the Better FAFSA,” Secretary Cardona said. “And it will help colleges prepare to process student records as quickly and as accurately as possible.”
The plan encouraged some financial-aid experts. “Ensuring our nation’s colleges and universities are prepared to assist in the massive overhaul of the FAFSA is critical for a smooth implementation, and we are excited to be partners in this work,” Justin Draeger, president and chief executive of NASFAA, said in a written statement. “These are some of the biggest changes facing the financial-aid profession — not to mention students and families — in decades, and it will take cooperation, clear communication, and mutual trust among all stakeholders to get us over the finish line. We are eager to begin this work and look forward to sharing more details soon.”
A half-hour after speaking with reporters, Secretary Cardona arrived at Washington’s famous Mayflower Hotel, where he gave a brief speech to a ballroom full of financial-aid officials at NASFAA’s Leadership & Legislative Conference & Expo. He received hearty applause upon being introduced — and again when he announced that the department would start releasing test versions of ISIR within two weeks.
Secretary Cardona acknowledged the frustrations of financial-aid officials, many of whom are worried about their college’s ability to get aid offers to families in a timely fashion after numerous delays in the FAFSA’s rollout. “I know what we’re up against right now,” he said. “And we’re gonna work on it together.”
Secretary Cardona’s remarks, which sounded at times like a campaign speech, came nearly a week after the department announced that colleges would not receive the first batch of data from applicants’ federal-aid applications until the “first half of March,” six weeks later than the department first promised. The delay in the transmission of ISIRs to colleges threatens to compress an already tight financial-aid timeline this spring, and many federal-aid applicants likely won’t receive aid offers until early or mid- April.
And the uncertainty has raised hackles on Capitol Hill. Last week, as Republican legislators were skewering the Education Department, the U.S. Government Accountability Office announced that it would investigate the rocky rollout of the FAFSA.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Monday’s announcement was what went unmentioned: An array of glitches and unexplained errors are preventing families from submitting the FAFSA. As The Chronicle reported last week, parents without a Social Security number can’t contribute to the FAFSA right now, which means their children can’t submit the form. And many undocumented parents have been unable to create an FSA ID, which every FAFSA contributor needs to access the application.
When asked to describe the specific problem that’s hindering such families on Monday, a senior department official declined to elaborate. “We are very aware of the challenges facing students who have parents without a Social Security number,” the official said, “and that we need to make the online form available to them is a very, very high priority for us. I don’t have a specific timeline, but I can tell you that we are working on it with a great deal of urgency.”
As Mark Kantrowitz, a nationally recognized expert on financial aid, noted on Monday, there are 19 “known issues,” or technical problems with the FAFSA, only three of which have been fixed since the beginning of the year. And most of those problems prevent students from filing the application.
“The No. 1 thing the U.S. Department of Education should do is to fix the bugs, so that contributors can get FSA IDs,” Kantrowitz wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “Families cannot file the FAFSA if a contributor can’t get an FSA ID to sign the form electronically.”
Meanwhile, many callers attempting to reach FAFSA support have experienced two- or three-hour waits — and some haven’t been able to get through. “This announcement does not address the Federal Student Aid Information Center being overwhelmed with calls,” Kantrowitz said. The department has not said if it plans to hire and train more customer-service representatives.
What Monday’s announcement did do, Kantrowitz, said, was lay out a plan to help some small colleges generate aid offers when ISIRs finally come through. “If the FAFSA information starts flowing in March, college financial-aid administrators will be crunched for time to issue financial-aid offers. (Keep in mind that the U.S. Department of Education said that the ISIRs will start during the first half of March, which might mean the first ISIRs go out on the ides of March, and it may take some time for college financial-aid administrators to get all their ISIRs.) Larger colleges have automated packaging and should be able to process the ISIRs quickly, but smaller colleges do not and may be overwhelmed.”
One big problem: Applicants won’t be able to correct any errors on their FAFSAs until colleges receive their ISIRs. So, when those ISIRs finally come through, a wave of corrections will soon follow. That’s just one more reason financial-aid officers are bracing for an intense spring.
“I know your jobs are not easy, but they’re really tough right now,” Secretary Cardona told his audience at the NASFAA event on Monday. “Many of you have spring and summer plans that have to be put on hold because your schedules will likely have more of a demand on them.”
One longtime financial-aid director offered a succinct response to the department’s announcement in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Just my opinion of course, but this isn’t what schools and students need. We need FAFSA’s being processed.”
