Richard A. Cordray, chief operating officer of the Education Department’s Federal Student Aid office, has overseen the disastrous rollout of the form that makes colleges possible for millions of students. On Tuesday, he spoke to college officials who are scrambling to mitigate the unfolding crisis caused by problems with the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
Cordray, who spoke at the annual conference of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, or NASFAA, in Milwaukee, took the stage as Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 hit “Under Pressure” played — a fitting walk-up song that prompted a wave of laughter through a packed convention-center ballroom. The department’s leaders, much like those who lead the nation’s financial-aid offices, are indeed under pressure: The fall semester is fast approaching, some families are still waiting for their aid offers, and the federal-aid process remains an engine in need of repair.
Cordray, who will step down at the end of June, was received warmly enough by his audience, some of whom had said that, despite their many frustrations with the FAFSA, they appreciated him showing up to speak after months of criticism that federal legislators, association leaders, and college officials have heaped on the Education Department. No one jeered; no one threw tomatoes.
But no one who’s been tuned into the FAFSA fiasco heard much, if anything, new. Cordray, who has led FSA since May 2021, discussed the department’s role in a series of recent initiatives to help ease borrowers’ burdens, including pauses in student-loan repayments, the overhaul of loan-forgiveness programs, granting disability discharges, and providing debt relief for Americans whose “colleges cheated them out of their education.”
Cordray called the recent overhaul of the FAFSA “another generational project that is both huge and complex.” He acknowledged that the rollout has been “a major challenge,” sparking a round of derisive chuckles in the crowd. He described how the department revamped the form and upgraded the technical infrastructure behind it for the first time in four decades. He noted that the creation of a new interface with the Internal Revenue Service, which enables federal-aid applicants to automatically pull their tax data into the FAFSA, requires strict compliance with new cybersecurity standards: “That has been a huge project in itself.”
Cordray acknowledged that FAFSA completions continued to lag well behind last year’s rate. “We’ve been gaining steadily, we’re working hard to catch up,” he said, describing the department’s efforts to spread the message that, typically, students can complete the form in less than an hour.
Then he offered a glancing acknowledgment of the applicants who remain stuck in the FAFSA process through no fault of their own. They include students from mixed-status families who are desperately awaiting financial-aid offers on the cusp of July. “We’re also well aware that it’s been much more challenging than that for students in some portions of the population.”
A major question looming over NASFAA’s conference was whether the 2025-26 FAFSA would become available on October 1, the traditional opening date. Cordray said that his staff is “working toward” that goal, “with the aim of enabling an improved application experience.” This careful wording stoked some skeptical comments among spectators standing against the wall in the back of the room.
But one thing is certain: The FAFSA colleges have right now is the FAFSA they’ll have the next time around. In the forthcoming financial-aid cycle, the application will be “consistent” with the 2024-25 model, the department confirmed in an announcement on Monday. Still, Cordray said, the department will make several improvements in order to deliver a better user experience.
The 2025-26 FAFSA will not be made available for public comment. Yet Cordray said his colleagues would continue to solicit feedback that might improve the help messages on the application and tip sheets for applicants. The department also plans to conduct a series of listening sessions this summer and send out a request for information to gather further input from the field.
And with that, Cordray moved on, describing the department’s recent efforts to step up enforcement to protect student borrowers from wrongdoing by institutions, and the new Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment regulations that will take effect in July.
“Altogether, these extensive projects have made for a heavy load over the past three years,” Cordray said. “We haven’t always gotten everything right … but we’ve been hard pressed to keep up with our heavy load.”
Financial-aid officers too must keep shouldering a heavy load throughout the summer, all the while eyeing an uncertain fall. And after months of unpleasant FAFSA surprises, many of them said they were bracing for even more.
Cordray’s speech came one day after news of yet another delay in the FAFSA saga caused gasps and groans among frustrated financial-aid leaders. On Monday, the Education Department announced that colleges would not be able to submit corrections to students’ FAFSA records in bulk until the first half of August — not the end of June, as the department had previously said. Further delaying that process, which is normally available when the FAFSA goes live, means that some students with special circumstances — such as a parent who lost their job — must continue to wait for a final financial-aid offer.
Though the Education Department said in its announcement that colleges could make corrections on a student-by-student basis, financial-aid officers said that wouldn’t be feasible for larger institutions. “It would be impossible,” said one financial-aid director at a private college where classes begin in mid-August. “This is completely unacceptable — I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
The director, who said he was not permitted to speak publicly, described how relentless FAFSA-processing delays and the ever-shifting timeline for fixes have sapped many of his colleagues’ faith: “We’ve been trained not to trust what we’re told.”
In session after session, financial-aid officers expressed their exasperation and exhaustion. They indulged in gallows humor about eight-day work weeks, sleepless nights, and canceled summer vacations. Even so, some said they were as determined as ever, steeled by the task of pushing through an unprecedented fiasco. A couple teared up when describing their commitment to helping frustrated students who are still stranded in FAFSA limbo.
In a written statement, Justin Draeger, NASFAA’s president and chief executive, said the latest FAFSA holdup will harm the most vulnerable students: “The idea that some college students are hoping to begin classes in a matter of weeks and are still unable to get a final financial aid offer is unacceptable. The longer we go without the ability for schools to efficiently and quickly make corrections to student FAFSA records, the greater the uncertainty becomes for students who are still hanging in the balance.”
Even if the FAFSA goes live on October 1, financial-aid officers worry that the federal-aid process will suffer from further glitches and unexpected delays. “This patchwork functionality is not how the system is intended to operate and is exactly the kind of situation that we hope to avoid for next year’s FAFSA,” Draeger said in his statement. “We continue to urge the department to ensure that the entire FAFSA system — from the application itself to processing and the ability to make corrections — is up and running smoothly by the time the application goes live.”
After Cordray’s remarks, it was Melanie Storey’s turn.
Storey, director of policy implementation and oversight at FSA, began by thanking financial-aid officers for their work — and for being gracious to her and her colleagues. “It really is important for me just to say thank you back,” she said. “We know. We hear you. This has been a tremendously difficult year. This is not how any of us wanted or expected it to go. We are sorry for the added angst, for all of us in the room — me, you, all of us.”
For a moment, the ballroom sounded almost festive.
Storey praised her staff, whom she said was working hard behind the scenes: “They care deeply, and they’re trying to deliver a form that makes sense to students, parents, and applicants, and that ultimately results in a successful application for federal aid.”
To that end, Storey said, FSA has been devising possible ways to smooth out some familiar snags students have encountered with the FAFSA. Like the confusing question asking dependent students if they want to “apply for a direct unsubsidized loan only.” FSA has indicated that an exceedingly high volume of applicants clicked “Yes,” suggesting that they didn’t understand the question.
College counselors have said that a double negative in the question tripped up some students who, as a result of clicking “Yes,” unwittingly indicated that they were declining to provide their parents’ financial information. And that made such students ineligible for need-based aid until later in the spring, when they were finally able to submit corrections to their FAFSA.
Storey said the 2025-26 FAFSA might include a pop-up message that explains the consequences of that clicking “Yes” in response to that question. “We’re trying to be very clear that if you select this, you will not be eligible for any other additional aid,” she said. Though the form will be fundamentally the same in the next aid cycle, she added, “that doesn’t mean we won’t be making any changes … that doesn’t mean we’re not going to fix the issues that are currently existing.”
Making the FAFSA easier for mixed-status families to complete would be a top priority, Storey said. From Day 1, undocumented parents have struggled to create a Federal Student Aid ID, known as an FSA ID, which every contributor needs to access the application. And the new, cumbersome identity-verification process has stymied many parents who lack a Social Security number — and caused a great deal of anxiety among them. “It has been, I know, extraordinarily frustrating for students and families,” Storey said. She pledged that her staff intended to ensure that the form does not “become a barrier again.”
And in the months ahead, Storey said, FSA would work to improve communication with families, especially those in which one or more parents are undocumented, “to both give them comfort about the system and trust in the system, which we know we need to rebuild.”
Finally, Storey said she was confident that the FAFSA would be ready on October 1. Hearty applause followed.
Still, anyone listening carefully had reason to wonder whether the entire FAFSA system would be fully functional at that point, and whether colleges would have to wait — and wait — for the department to process and deliver FAFSAs, just as they did this past winter.
“We heard loud and clear,” Storey said, “the desire for all functionality to come together as soon as possible. I predict we will.”
But would that happen on October 1? November 1? Later?
Despite those as yet unanswerable questions, Brenda D. Hicks, director of financial aid at Southwestern College, in Winfield, Kan., left the session feeling better about the possibility of the 2025-26 FAFSA becoming available on time. She appreciated what she described as Storey’s transparency. That, she said, “goes a long way in helping me trust the information she shares.”
Amid the many FAFSA challenges that have beset her staff and students, Hicks was encouraged by the feedback Storey had shared from applicants who had positive experiences with the revamped form: “It was good to hear another reminder that despite the problems, the form is faster and a better experience for the users, which is, after all, the goal.”
But some of her colleagues said they weren’t quite sure what to think after hearing Cordray and Storey speak.
“Our profession understands that the department has a complex task on so many issues in addition to the FAFSA,” said John Gudvangen, associate vice chancellor for enrollment and director of financial aid at the University of Denver. “But we’re frustrated by the persistent roadblocks and less-than-fully transparent recognition of the FAFSA rollout. We’re concerned about the loss of credibility in the process. Students have missed opportunities because of the department. And today may be the first time we heard the words ‘I’m sorry.’”
In the end, there was little time for questions. But in the session’s final moments, as many people were filing out, a financial-aid director from a university in California stood up and described students from mixed-status families who had cried in the financial-aid office. They had cried after encountering problems with the FAFSA, she said, and they had cried after finally overcoming them: “This is incredibly stressful for this group of students and families.”
It’s just an application, yes. But, for some students, it has been so much more.
