FAFSA forms again delayed for many after last year's troubled rollout

As fall classes approach, a problem-plagued rollout of the federal government’s revised FAFSA — the form needed to secure financial aid — could pose more trouble and slow some college students’ ability to pay bills.

The latest glitch is being felt as the U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday announced it will launch the 2025-26 FAFSA form used by millions through a new process, making it available Oct. 1 for testing, but only for a limited number of students and institutions.

All students will be able to access the form on or before Dec. 1, which is two months later than in previous years.

“The Department listened carefully to the input of students, families and higher education institutions, made substantial changes to leadership and operations at Federal Student Aid, and is taking a new approach this year that will significantly improve the FAFSA experience,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

For now, weary financial aid offices and anxious students are trying to get through 2024-25.

In the latest setback, the Education Department notified colleges in a July 30 update that a system enabling them to correct student financial records in bulk, expected to be ready mid-month, will not be available at all for the 2024-25 academic year.

It means campus financial aid staff who already have worked around months of delays and data woes surrounding the revised form now have another task: They must make individual changes manually, a time-consuming process that could further delay aid awards and leave some students unable to pay before fall classes begin.

The department explained that it has decided to prioritize a robust 2025-26 FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

“We know that this is not the news that you, our partners, were expecting and adds to the challenges your organizations have already been facing,” the department’s update said.

It’s not yet clear how many students are affected in Western Pennsylvania. A spot check of campuses suggests schools are in different stages of the correction process.

At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a state-owned university with almost 9,300 students, officials said some 8,300 new, prospective, transfer and continuing students already have received their financial aid offers. An unspecified number still requires FAFSA form corrections.

They typically involve adjustments due to federal verification, special circumstance requests from families who have had a change in their ability to pay, dependency overrides for students who are unable to provide parental information and other corrections or adjustments that are necessary due to conflicting FAFSA information, IUP spokeswoman Michelle Fryling said.

Last year, 1,300 corrections to FAFSA forms needed to be made by IUP.

“Batch corrections to a FAFSA allow schools to make updates in their Student Information System and send those corrections out to the Department of Education in a batch file,” Fryling said.

This year’s complication meant administrators had to “look up each individual student and make all adjustments to all FAFSA data fields one by one,” she said.

“This process is more time consuming and involves a delay as we must wait for the corrections to be sent back to our system before we can process a student’s financial aid eligibility.

“So, the short answer is ‘yes’ — some students may have a delay to their aid disbursement or aid offer notifications,” she said.

At IUP, students can pay their fall bill in full by the Aug. 26 start of classes, or enroll by move-in day in a payment plan stretching as far as Nov. 20.

“We are very cognizant of the issues caused by FAFSA, and of course, we will work with our students in the case that those delays cause payment delays,” Fryling said.

Mandated by a 2020 act of Congress, the U.S. Department of Education began streamlining the complicated FAFSA, reducing its number of questions from 108 to 46. Delays and technical issues persisted into this calendar year, drastically slowing the rate of students who filled out and submitted the form.

As recently as March, the number of students nationally who completed a FAFSA was 40% behind last year. It sparked anxiety both in college admissions offices and in high schools, given what the federal government and others say is a strong correlation between FAFSA completion and college enrollment.

The rate has improved but still lags behind last year’s total by about 10%, according to the National College Attainment Network’s FAFSA Tracker.

As of late July, 48% of high school seniors in the class of 2024 had submitted a FAFSA, compared to 55% in 2023.

The University of Pittsburgh did not say Wednesday if aid awards would spill into fall semester.

“Pitt’s financial aid office is working diligently to mitigate any negative impact to the students,” spokesman Jared Stonesifer said. “Pitt students who are affected will receive updates during the process to make sure they are aware of any issues that arise.”

With 34,000 students, Pitt is Western Pennsylvania’s largest university.

At Carnegie Mellon University, spokesman Peter Kerwin said, “We’re not quite able to make that assessment yet. We’re almost ready to submit our updates, which the department will then process.”

LaRoche University spokesman Brady Butler said the latest FAFSA setback has not been an issue on its 1,100-student campus.

“We have always processed individual FAFSA corrections for students, a perk of being a smaller school, so the batch-processing issue does not impact our normal operating procedure,” Butler said.

Slippery Rock University, another state-owned university, predicts that its 8,300 students will not be affected.

“We are doing what is needed to ensure that all of this added manual work is completed prior to the start of the fall semester and disbursement of federal funds,” SRU spokesman Justin Zackal said.

At Pennsylvania Western University, spokeswoman Wendy Mackall said, “The latest issue with the FAFSA process will not impact our ability to make financial aid awards.”