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The Department of Education has announced new steps to help colleges speed up the processing of financial aid applications following a rocky rollout of the newly overhauled Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
The moves will reduce administrative hurdles, allowing colleges and universities to process applications and make financial aid offers more quickly and efficiently.
The announcement came just days after the Education Department released a FAFSA College Support Strategy that will send financial aid experts, technology and funding to lower-resourced schools, including those with fewer administrative staffers and less access to the latest technology.
Students and their families use the FAFSA to apply for federal grants, work-study programs and federal student loans to cover college expenses. Some states also use FAFSA information to determine financial aid eligibility.
What’s Being Done to Speed Up FAFSA Processing?
The additions to the FAFSA college support strategy announced by the Department of Education last week are aimed at processing student records more efficiently. These steps include:
- Easing verification requirements. The FAFSA verification process includes the review of a select pool of application information from any given institution. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Education Department is reducing the portion of applicants selected for verification.
- Halting routine program reviews. The department conducts routine program reviews to ensure that colleges meet their eligibility, financial and administrative requirements. Those program reviews have been suspended through June, except for those related to fraud or other serious problems.
- Improving recertification flexibility. Colleges are required to recertify for the Education Department’s federal student aid programs 90 days before their previous agreement expires. That 90-day timeline is being temporarily waived.
What Went Wrong With the New FAFSA
The 2024-2025 FAFSA was scheduled to launch on October 1 following a major redesign, but the online form didn’t open until December 30. Then, students and families couldn’t access the FAFSA for long periods for the first few days. The form is now available online 24/7.
The overhaul was supposed to make college financial aid more accessible. However, the new FAFSA initially failed to update for inflation the amount of family income that is shielded from consideration when determining financial aid. It used tables that were three years old to assess college affordability, potentially limiting the amount of aid a student could get.
The Department of Education has since agreed to adjust its FAFSA aid calculations. But now it says that it won’t start transmitting FAFSA information to schools until early March. It had previously announced that it would not begin sending data to colleges until the end of January, already later than usual. That has prompted concerns that students won’t receive their financial aid offers in time to make the best decision about where to go to college and how to pay for it.
How Some Universities Are Helping
In response, a number of schools have pushed back the traditional May 1 deadline for students to accept their admissions offer, including California State University, University of Virginia and Oregon State University.
“It’s now clear that holding to the traditional May 1 deadline would impose impossible constraints on parents and students who need to receive, process, and consider financial aid offers before making a final college choice for Fall 2024,” Oregon State said on its website.
Oregon State has extended its advanced tuition deposit deadline for freshman students to June 1, but added that it “will work with students who have challenges that make even a June 1 response unfeasible on a case-by-case basis.”
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