The Department of Education continued its painful process of rolling out the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) this week. The good news is that more than 7 million FAFSAs have now been processed and new applications are being processed in real time with institutional student information records (ISIRs) getting to institutions in a matter of days. 

The Department is also planning to fully open the correction system next week. Most of the mistakes with the ISIRs have to do with missing signatures or confusion over a question about unsubsidized loans. The Department estimates that 16% of all applications will need student corrections and once corrected most of those fixes will show up in 1-3 days. In total, approximately 30% of all ISIRs will need reprocessing, although some can be done without student corrections.

However, there are other fixes that will take longer. Some of the known issues will be reprocessed starting next week, but the Department doesn’t expect fixes for IRS discrepancies to be reprocessed until early May. The Department is also promising a better and more detailed list to schools than they originally received. According to the Department, schools will receive a detailed list of the ISIRs that have been sent to their institutions, including information on which are correct, which have problems and what those problems are.

In the meantime, the political reckoning over the FAFSA rollout is beginning. The House Appropriations and the Education and the Workforce committees both held hearings this week that focused on the FAFSA problems. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona faced questions while testifying before the Appropriations Committee on the President’s FY2025 budget request, while the Education Committee heard testimony from those affected by the delays, including representatives from institutions, financial aid officers, and those who do outreach to low-income students. 

The tone and tenor of both hearings illustrated the frustrations of everyone with the process, although Republican committee members were more ready to blame the Administration exclusively while the Democrats’ criticism was more tempered. Cardona, who admitted that the Department needed to do better, explained the enormity of the changes required of the new system and claimed that things were “going to get better.”

The Department also announced a partial workaround to provide state grant agencies that work with college access organizations authority to share some limited FAFSA completion information with those organizations. Because the new FAFSA uses IRS data, security protocols on tax information have prevented any sharing of information on students who have completed the FAFSA. The new guidance will require states that wish to provide information to college completion entities to sign a new agreement with the Department of Education. The announcement also provides state grant agencies guidance on how they can provide outreach to applicants regarding other federal means-tested benefits programs.