The rollout of the newly revamped 2024-2025 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) has been mired by glitches, delays, and limited availability since it was released on Dec. 30, 2023.
Students, parents, and school administrators are left with website functions that do not always work, limited windows of time when they can edit applications, and delays with the call center that leave some on hold for hours—if they are lucky enough to reach a real person.
“It’s chaos,” said Mark Kantrowitz, a college financial aid expert and consultant who was instrumental in creating the original online application in the late 1990s.
Mr. Kantrowitz told The Epoch Times that for the first week, the new FAFSA application was only available for a few hours each day as website administrators tried to fix bugs in real time.
“And if you’re one of the people who’ve run into an issue, it’s very frustrating. You’re worried that you won’t be able to do it in a timely manner [and] that you'll miss out on some aid because of it.
“Or you’re worried that you'll never be able to submit the form and, therefore, your child won’t be able to go to college,” he said.
The online application was rebuilt from the ground up for the 2024–2025 school year as part of the 2021 FAFSA Simplification Act (FSA).
The FSA was intended to be a complete overhaul of the program to improve the online application form and user experience, revamp the need analysis to make grants more accessible, and change the policies and procedures for the schools that participate.
Even though the U.S. Department of Education (ED) had three years to implement, test, and improve the new online application database and infrastructure, Mr. Kantrowitz said the “soft launch” rollout since Dec. 30, 2023, has been anything but streamlined.
“It seems that they didn’t allow enough time for testing. And so they’re calling it a soft launch right now ... which basically means that anybody who tries to submit the form is effectively a guinea pig, a beta tester.
“And for some people, it’s gone fine and is more streamlined than the original FAFSA because they eliminated about two-thirds of the questions. But it’s been challenging for some people,” he said.
Many facing the biggest hurdles with the new form are students with one or more parents who are not U.S. citizens.
Mr. Kantrowitz said the application now asks for social security numbers from both parents so each can sign the form separately if the student’s parents file joint taxes.
If one parent has a social security number but the other does not, the student might get stuck and be unable to proceed on time.
The change requiring both parents to sign the new FAFSA form is also creating issues with email.
Both are supposed to get email invites to sign the form independently, but in some families, only one parent is receiving the email, Mr. Kantrowitz added.
Issues for the Middle Class
But the changes to FAFSA transcend software glitches.Some families, notably ones with “middle income” or in the middle class, might receive less money this year than previously.
In the past, FAFSA calculated how much aid a student would receive with the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) based on family assets and income.
The EFC was replaced with the Student Aid Index (SAI) for the 2024–2025 school year.
Students earning degrees at Pasadena City College participate in the graduation ceremony in Pasadena, Calif., on June 14, 2019. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
According to the Office of Federal Student Aid, the index is used by college financial aid offices to determine how much federal aid a student would receive if they attended that school.
As a need-based analysis, it factors the income and assets of the student and their parents or spouse, depending on the family situation.
Before this change, a family’s expected contribution was divided by the number of students it had who were enrolled or enrolling in college, Mr. Kantrowitz explained.
“And what that meant is that when parents went from one child in college to two children in college, or if they had twins, it was like dividing the parent’s income almost in half—not quite in half—but it was a significant impact.
“So you can have a family with [a] six-figure income, who was nevertheless qualifying for a small Pell Grant,” he said.
Mr. Kantrowitz mentioned this change was championed by former Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who was the head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee when the FSA was passed in 2021.
He said Mr. Alexander was “adamant that a student shouldn’t get more financial aid simply because of the timing of the parents’ children.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Alexander for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
There are further impacts on middle and high-income families as well.
Mr. Kantrowitz said the FSA called for adding inflation adjustments in the 2024–2025 FAFSA application. Inflation was supposed to be calculated from April 2020 to April 2023, which he said was roughly 18 percent.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 30, 2020. Al Drago/Pool/Getty Images
However, he said the education department announced it would not adjust this year’s FAFSA application for inflation and would instead do it for the 2025–2026 school year.
Mr. Kantrowitz created tables that featured estimates with and without inflationary adjustments.
He said that inflation did not affect low-income families as their Student Aid Index remained zero because they were making even less than before inflation.
But for families in the middle class, Mr. Kantrowitz estimates a $1,600 to $1,700 difference in the aid index after factoring in inflation, resulting in less federal student assistance for the student.
For high-income families, the index changed by roughly $4,600, meaning that both middle and high-income families could receive “thousands of dollars less” in aid this year, he said.
Further Issues
Even if a family is not seeing radical changes to their SAI from inflation or rule changes, the data for the index will not be available until the end of January, causing further delays, Mr. Kantrowitz explained.The FAFSA data used by financial administrators to calculate aid has not yet been implemented as of Jan. 18, he said.
If a student is seeking early enrollment, the delays in calculating SAI could affect what school they choose and the level of aid they eventually receive.
Orange Coast College campus, in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2020. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times
“But the problem is, they’ve had three years to implement the changes. Why haven’t they had some more testing of it ahead of time? And so ... maybe launch it on time?
“Congress already gave them a three-month extension, which is now basically turning into, realistically, a four-month extension. And it’s not clear if some of these problems are gonna get fixed or not,” Mr. Kantrowitz said.
When he helped the education department create the first online version of FAFSA in the late 1990s, the initial process only took Mr. Kantrowitz two weeks before he gave his source data to the contractor.
Even though the department built the new FAFSA from the ground up, “this isn’t rocket science, it shouldn’t have taken three years—it should have been done early. But this is a government for you,” he added.
In a statement provided to The Epoch Times, the National College Attainment Network asked the department to “provide clear guidance about the days and hours when the form will be reliably available.”
“This year, these organizations have one-third less time to help millions of students complete the FAFSA. Let’s give them clear information so they can schedule successful FAFSA completion events and help achieve our shared policy goal of increased FAFSA completion rates,” it said.
After speaking with concerned students, parents, and school counselors who struggled with the new form, Mr. Kantrowitz tells anyone still experiencing glitches to contact a college aid administrator as they will have updates on the latest fixes to bugs within the application.
The Epoch Times reached out to the education department but did not receive a response before publication.
