FAFSA Issues Cause Delay in Financial Aid Awards

• The FAFSA usually launches on Oct. 1 each year.
• However, this year's FAFSA wasn't available until Dec. 30 and has been mired in technical and administrative issues.
• Students may suffer due to continued delays, especially those dependent on financial aid to attend college.

College students shouldn't expect their financial aid award offers until March, at the earliest, adding another delay to a messy start to the 2024-25 academic year.

The Department of Education (ED) announced Tuesday that it won't send student data from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to colleges and universities until "the first half of March." ED needs more time to adjust for inflation when determining a student's Income Protection Allowance (IPA), which the department is legally required to do but left out of the initial FAFSA launch in late December.

Student financial aid offers will be delayed as a result.

In a typical year, the FAFSA launches on Oct. 1 and data is shared with institutions within a few weeks. This timeline gives financial aid administrators ample time to review prospective and current students' financial information to determine how much federal, state, and institutional financial aid they can qualify for in the upcoming academic year.

The 2024-25 academic year will be markedly different, however.

ED launched a new Simplified FAFSA for the upcoming school year. The department delayed the rollout of the application until Dec. 30, but even then, that launch was mired in technical issues — some of which persist and are preventing groups of students from submitting their FAFSA.

The department promised at the time that it would share student data with institutions sometime in late January.

It later became public that ED had not baked inflation into its formula for calculating financial aid, leaving a potential $1.8 billion in federal student aid on the table. The department later stated that it would adjust its formula, but financial aid administrators said at the time that this likely meant delays in the ability to process applicant information.

ED confirmed this suspicion Wednesday.

"These continued delays, communicated at the last minute, threaten to harm the very students and families that federal student aid is intended to help," Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), said in a statement.

"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."

An NASFAA spokesperson told BestColleges that in a typical year, schools receive FAFSA applicant data within 1-3 business days after they submit the application.

The time to then turn that data into a financial aid offer can vary depending on the institution. Financial aid administrators generally need a "couple of weeks" to then turn that data into a financial aid package, so many students should expect a financial aid award letter sometime in April if ED keeps its promise of a mid-March release, the spokesperson said.

Some worry this latest delay may cause students to forgo college altogether.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican representing Louisiana and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement that deciding which college to attend becomes increasingly difficult if students don't know how much aid they will qualify for.

College Decision Day is May 1, but many students may not receive their financial aid offers until April, depending on processing times at individual institutions.

"I recently met with several leaders of Louisiana colleges who independently told me they are concerned about FAFSA. This rollout has been a disaster," Cassidy said. "[ED] had three years to prepare the rollout of the updated FAFSA. Their inability to do their job has real consequences for students and families."

NASFAA, along with eight other organizations, called on institutions to extend their enrollment, scholarship, and financial aid deadlines beyond the traditional May 1 date. This has precedent, as many schools offered similar extensions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cassidy, along with 27 other Republican lawmakers, announced Jan. 24 that they called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the "botched" launch of the Simplified FAFSA.