After many delays, there will be yet another delay.
The U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday 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 expected. And with that, financial-aid directors, enrollment officials, college counselors, and students groaned in frustration.
A financial-aid cycle like none before is about to become even more complicated. Many colleges will have to scramble to get aid offers out the door in time for applicants to weigh their options before the national May 1 deposit deadline, and experts say many institutions might end up extending that deadline out of necessity.
“Today’s news further compresses an already-strained time frame for students to receive aid offers and make decisions about their college-going,” Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Attainment Network, said in a written statement. “Students and counselors will need additional flexibility with the traditional May 1 commitment deadline so we stand a chance at continuing the postpandemic college-enrollment recovery under way for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.”
The Education Department’s announcement marked the latest in a series of delays that have defined the long-awaited rollout of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. The application, which students use to apply for federal grants, loans, and work-study, usually becomes available on October 1.
But on the heels of a significant overhaul of the federal-aid process, the streamlined application didn’t go live until December 30, and the first few days were especially rocky. Since then, many applicants have continued to hit unexplained snags when attempting to complete the application.
Then, last week, the department said it would update the guidelines for determining a student’s aid eligibility so as to account for inflation — something it had failed to do before releasing the new FAFSA. That update “will help students qualify for as much financial aid as possible,” James R. Kvaal, the under secretary of education, said on Tuesday. “By taking this step, students and families will have access to an additional $1.8 billion in Pell Grants.”
But that update will further delay the transmission of Institutional Student Information Records, or ISIRs, to colleges and states, a process that can take days or even weeks to complete. Colleges must then load the data, test their systems, and model award amounts. As a result, many federal-aid applicants probably won’t receive aid offers until early or mid- April.
Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a written statement that continuing delays threaten to harm the same students that the federal-aid process is meant to help: “With this last-minute news, our nation’s colleges are once again left scrambling as they determine how best to work within these new timelines to issue aid offers as soon as possible — so the students who can least afford higher education aren’t the ones who ultimately pay the price for these missteps.”
Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said the organization would continue to encourage colleges to do what they’ve already been doing: “Try to think of every way possible to push back your decision dates as far as possible to give low-income students as much time as possible.”
But that’s much easier said than done. “Colleges have been bending and bending and bending,” Fansmith said. “Adding an additional month-and-a-half delay to the start of the process for colleges is just going to have clear, harmful implications for low-income students. And you worry a lot about what more colleges can possibly do.”
A senior Education Department official on Tuesday acknowledged the impact that the delays were having on applicants: “We know how important this is to students and families who are deciding where to enroll this fall. And of course we are very aware of the calendar that plays into that admissions process and the timeline that students and families are on. And our top priority is to get students as much financial aid as we can and to get them the information they need as quickly as possible.”
So far, about 3.1 million people have submitted a FAFSA for the 2024-25 aid cycle, the department said on Tuesday. But parents without a Social Security number are still unable to get access to the FAFSA, a problem that the senior department official described as “very, very high priority for us” to fix “as quickly as possible.”
