Next Year’s FASFA Form Will Be Provided Through A Phased Rollout From October 1st Through December 1, 2024
Overview
Late yesterday afternoon the U.S. Department of Education provided the latest update on the launch of next year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA) Form including details on both when the Forms will be made available to applicants and their families as well as institution and how the forms will be rolled out through a new process.
In an email circulated shortly after 2:30 PM ET, the Department stated,
“The U.S. Department of Education today announced (www.ed.gov/news/press-releases) that the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA® form) will be launched through a new process. Starting on October 1, the Department will release the 2025-26 FAFSA form for testing with a limited set of students and institutions. The Department will make the application available to all students on or before December 1. This process is informed by conversations and feedback from thousands of students, institutions, and other stakeholders.
The Department will invite volunteers to participate in the testing period, and over time will make the form available to an increasing number of participants, starting with hundreds and expanding to tens of thousands of applicants. This process will allow the Department to test and resolve issues before making the form available to all students and contributors. Using this approach, the Department will launch full functionality, including submission and back-end processing at the same time.
The goal of the phased rollout of the 2025-26 FAFSA form, consistent with software industry best-practices, is to work with limited groups of users to identify and resolve the kind of system errors that can derail millions of students and contributors and thousands of colleges. A phased rollout will also allow the Department to incorporate user feedback to ensure the application’s instructions are clear and easy-to-use for students and contributors and provide resources for the community that supports students and families.
Thanks to investments through the FAFSA Student Support Strategy and the partnership of community and stakeholders, student application success rates have significantly increased over the past six months, with the submission gap from the prior year falling from roughly 40% in March to under 4%, as of today.
Throughout the testing period, the Department will share regular updates with students, families and a broad range of community stakeholders to make sure they clearly understand our progress. This will also boost confidence among students and families, institutions, state agencies, and other partners and stakeholders.
Moreover, the Department will continue to seek feedback from our partners through August listening sessions and a new formal request for information that will be released next week. The Department will publish more about what it has learned through these engagements, including releasing a new roadmap with additional tools for students and families, counselors, institutions and other partners planning for a successful 2025-26 FAFSA season.
In the coming weeks, the Department will release more information about how this testing period will work. Our top priority is ensuring students have access to the maximum federal financial aid possible to reach their education goals, and we are working tirelessly to ensure students and our partners have a smooth experience with the 2025-26 FAFSA form.”
What It Means
The news likely comes as a bit of a surprise and frustration to the higher education student financial aid community who was assured by Secretary Miguel Cardona at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators Conference that the FASFA would be available “on time” by October 1st in his remarks.
The announcement met with immediate response from House Committee on Education & the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx who put out a press release a half an hour later entitled, “ and stating:
“Ensuring a working, timely, and accurate FAFSA should have been the Biden-Harris administration’s priority from day one. Instead, it has continually shown that illegal debt transfer schemes are far more important than ensuring low-income students can afford college. We’ve seen this movie before, and spoiler alert, it was a disaster: students and institutions are still reeling from the Biden-Harris administration’s missed deadlines and broken promises during last year’s ‘launch.’ Needing yet another delay to ‘fix’ issues for the second consecutive year reveals yet another layer of the Department’s mismanagement of FASFA these past four years. Clear communication has been sorely lacking and should be the bare minimum going forward. I’ll continue fighting for transparency and accountability until a complete and ready FAFSA actually materializes.”
