The Education Department announced on Wednesday that availability of the federal student aid application form would be delayed for a second year in a row, after months of last-ditch troubleshooting and contingency planning failed to fully fix significant problems with last year’s revised application.
Instead, the form, known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, will go live for “testing with a limited set of students and institutions” in October to iron out issues before launching fully on Dec. 1 for the 2025-26 academic year. The form is traditionally available on Oct. 1.
The FAFSA form has been the source of continuing dread for officials, students and college administrators since the department introduced a shortened and redesigned version last year that was intended to streamline the application process.
Far from becoming easier, however, the process has been plagued by a steady stream of bugs and data entry issues that locked students out, returned inaccurate aid calculations and severely tied up the enrollment process that plays out in the spring, when colleges typically notify accepted students how much they can expect to pay.
The delay announced on Wednesday mirrored the problematic launch last year, when initial delays in October foreshadowed much deeper problems that affected the form for months after it became fully available.
As recently as last month, the department was still running into problems with 2024-25 applications.
On July 30, the department notified schools that they could not send back forms that needed corrections — to reflect unexpected changes in a family’s income, for example — in batches, forcing them to return revised forms one by one.
“The fact that we are still, to this day, dealing with the aftershocks of this year’s FAFSA rollout shows just how imperative it is that the process is thoroughly tested from end to end and launched as a system, not in a piecemeal manner,” Beth Maglione, the interim president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, said the phased rollout this fall would help incorporate feedback from users and smooth out any issues early.
“Following a challenging 2024-25 FAFSA cycle, 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,” Mr. Cardona said in a statement.
The department’s troubled record overseeing the form has drawn bipartisan criticism since last year. On Wednesday, Republicans who had pressed for the normal Oct. 1 launch assailed department leaders.
“This is completely unacceptable,” Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said in a statement. “For the second year in a row, the Biden-Harris administration is going to miss the traditional date to make the FAFSA form available to students.”
“Many students may forgo college when they cannot choose a school because they do not know their eligibility for student aid,” the statement added.
Mr. Cardona had testified before the Senate this spring that he expected the form to be ready by Oct. 1.
The bungled rollout of the 2024-25 form led to the resignation of Richard Cordray, the previous head of the Federal Student Aid office, in April. The Education Department tapped Jeremy Singer, the president of the College Board, to replace Mr. Cordray in overseeing the 2025-26 application.
In its announcement on Wednesday, the department said it had regained ground in getting students through the process. In total, FAFSA applications were down just 4 percent from the 2023-24 cycle, it said, after falling by as much as 40 percent year over year earlier in March.
But that progress has come at the expense of many college administrators who have been forced to work through the summer completing aid offers, as well as students who have had to postpone enrolling to weigh competing offers and decide where they can afford to attend school.
“Now that it has announced its schedule for the 2025-26 school year, it’s imperative the department meet the delivery date with a flawless rollout and fully functional FAFSA,” Mark Becker, the president of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, said in a statement on Wednesday. “On or before Dec. 1 must be on or before Dec. 1.”
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