After last year’s rollout disaster, Education Department officials claim to have improved the application process following feedback from stakeholders. More than 167,000 students have successfully submitted their FAFSA application since Oct. 1, following four rounds of testing. The department can now “say with confidence” that the application is working and will serve as “the gateway to college access and affordability to millions of students.”
“Already, over 650,000 more applicants are eligible for Pell Grants, and more students are receiving Pell Grants, this school year compared to last year,” Miguel Cardona, U.S. secretary of education, said in a news release. “We stand ready to help millions more students complete the FAFSA and get the financial aid they need to pursue their dreams of a college education.”
Thousands of students faced numerous challenges when attempting to complete their financial aid application last year, following a form overhaul meant to simplify the application process, which instead made things more difficult. As a result, 29 percent fewer students completed their application in May compared with the same time in 2023.
The department said it has made various improvements to ensure the same issues don’t occur during this year’s application cycle. Staffing has been increased by almost 80 percent to ensure students and their families can connect with representatives when calling for financial aid support.
More than 700 agents have been added to the department’s contact center and an additional 225 agents are set to be hired in the coming weeks, to offset long wait times faced by callers last year.
“We need a better FAFSA form to deliver financial aid to students going to college and other forms of education after high school,” James Kvaal, the undersecretary of education, said. “Thank you to everyone who has helped the 2025-26 FAFSA launch successfully and ahead of schedule, including students and families, Department staff, and financial aid administrators and counselors across the country.”
While last year’s technical glitches have been addressed with the FAFSA form and system now in a “strong position,” one group was left vulnerable in the wake of the technical errors that occurred. Students whose parents did not have a Social Security number were reported to be blocked from filling out the financial aid form, resulting in nearly 9 percent fewer high school seniors and first-time applicants according to a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The office of Federal Student Aid suspended the identity verification process that had barred contributors without Social Security numbers from logging into the online financial aid form for the 2025-26 application.
However, ahead of his inauguration in January, President-elect Donald Trump’s administration has announced plans to shut down the Department of Education, posing significant threats of financial aid cuts, as well as plans to begin mass deportations. According to Stephen Barker, communication director for OneGoal — a Chicago nonprofit that assists students to enroll and graduate from postsecondary programs — this could leave mixed-status families vulnerable.
OneGoal is looking carefully at the implications for students applying for financial aid for the first time or those from mixed-status families, Barker said, where one or more of their contributors don’t have Social Security numbers.
While the National College Attainment Network has signaled that students “should use caution” when completing their FAFSA form, Barker said OneGoal doesn’t believe it’s “responsible to advise students whether they should or should not submit their FAFSA.” Instead, the nonprofit is being as transparent with students as possible about the potential risks.
The Higher Education Act prohibits the use of students’ data for any purpose other than determining financial aid eligibility and awards to students. But with the incoming Trump administration signaling its priorities, Braker said there’s no way to ensure “this administration is not going to sort of supersede or overturn the rules of the Higher Education Act in order to sort of use this as a lever for accessing information.”
“We can’t imagine a scenario where that’s likely, but we’re not policy experts, and can’t say for sure what an unpredictable administration is going to do,” Braker said. “We’re going to make sure that students have the information that they need and then they’re going to have to work with their families and their school counselors to determine if it’s safe for them to fill this out and provide that information.”
©2024 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
