Education launches 2025-26 FAFSA following weeks of testing

The online Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as the FAFSA, is live following weeks of beta testing, the Education Department announced Thursday. 

After delays and glitches plagued what was meant to be an overhauled FAFSA form last year, the department said that results of ongoing testing so far are encouraging for the application that helps determine the eligibility of students for federal aid like student loans and grants.

“The FAFSA form is live, and the department is actively processing online submissions and sending them to schools so they can get financial aid into the hands of students,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters Thursday. 

As of yesterday, over 167,000 FAFSAs have been submitted through the beta tests. Education was opening up the form to more and more people during each round of beta testing. 

Traditionally, the form comes out on Oct. 1, a deadline both chambers of Congress have now opted to mandate via law. Last year, Education opened it in late December, setting off a series of delays for colleges and universities sending out financial aid offers to students.

FAFSA was supposed to be simpler last year after Congress passed laws meant to streamline it, and in some ways, it was. The number of questions went down for applicants, and data sharing with the IRS that was enabled by one of those laws meant less work for those filling out forms. 

But delays and tech issues — like being blocked from starting an application at all, or getting an incorrect student aid estimate — dogged the process for many. 

Education counted over 40 separate technical issues with the initial rollout, according to the Government Accountability Office. Students couldn’t always reach the call center for help at Education, and those that did often didn’t get good information on how to navigate tech issues. 

This year, the department started four rounds of beta testing in October to find bugs and improve the user experience of the form. The department did not do beta testing before the rollout last year, a department official confirmed with Nextgov/FCW. 

“Guided by data on where applicants were struggling, we have steadily improved the form,” said Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal of the process this year. “For example, we've helped students and parents avoid submitting forms before signing them, [and] cut missing signatures by more than 80% to a level that is now in line or lower than past years.” 

The department also added new accountability to Federal Student Aid and increased outside technical expertise, said Cardona, in addition to pursuing listening sessions and accepting more feedback from partners and stakeholders. The U.S. Digital Service helped with the rollout this year. 

Education is also touting increased call center staff and new resources for stakeholders like schools and counselors.

So far, Education has gotten 95% satisfaction ratings with the experience, and over 90% said that the form took a reasonable amount of time to complete, said Jeremy Singer, who came on as a FAFSA executive advisor to lead the application’s strategy in June.

“We invested heavily in testing and the investment was well worth it,” he said, noting that the department didn’t find any new “critical” bugs, but did fix some latent issues from last year, like where students would be stuck on certain pages of the application.

Another change from last year is meant to help with the identity verification requirements for those without Social Security numbers.

Both students and contributors like parents have to fill out the form. Last year, many families of mixed immigration status struggled because issues prevented those without Social Security numbers from doing so.

There were problems with new identity verification processes through FSA ID and backlogs at the department for processing the data of those using manual workarounds to verify themselves. 

This year, the department is allowing contributors to finish the form while their identity is still being verified, a senior department official told reporters. 

“Students will receive full access to the aid they are entitled to, and contributors will not be required to complete the manual identity validation process prior to aid being disbursed to a student,” a department official told Nextgov/FCW. “The department will continue to make improvements to the identity validation process for those without SSNs.”

Moving forward, the department is on track to launch next year by Oct. 1, a senior department official told reporters. 

“Fixing a process and a system that is nearly as old as me — it wasn’t an easy task,” Cardona said of the work. “Just because there was a new policy in place from Congress, it didn’t mean that the operations system that had to implement the changes was prepared for the changes. Now it is because of the work that we’ve done over the last 6 months.”

The FAFSA simplification effort has meant modernizing or replacing over 20 old computer systems, said Kvaal. 

Contract requirements for the update to the FAFSA processing system were pushed back — some not even met when the new system launched — and some planned testing steps were skipped before last year’s launch, according to GAO, meaning that Education didn’t even find some of the defects last year until the new FAFSA was live.

GAO also pinned problems last year on a lack of disciplined systems acquisition practices and the absence of a long-term chief information officer at Education in recent years. 

Last year, the FAFSA problems led to a 9% decline in submitted applications among first-time applicants, according to GAO, and an overall decline of about 432,000 applications as of the end of August. 

Now, more students are receiving Pell Grants this year as compared to last, said Cardona. 

He noted he is a first generation college graduate, but never filled out the FAFSA himself.

“I felt it was too complex and didn’t want to put that burden on my parents,” he said. 

Moving forward, “there are still opportunities to improve the user experience … which is what we will turn to next,” said Singer. The work is about “continually iterating to build a better system.”