In a pair of scathing reports, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has revealed the critical missteps taken by the Department of Education during last year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) rollout. 

The reports, released today (you can find them here and here), details how systemic failures in the Department’s planning, communication, and testing led to a disastrous implementation of the new FAFSA form, which has left millions of students and families struggling to access essential financial aid. One report focuses on the technical implementation of the simplified FAFSA form and the other on the financial aid aspect of the FAFSA rollout.

The findings also raise alarms about the upcoming FAFSA cycle for the 2025-2026 academic year, with GAO officials warning that unless significant reforms are made, similar issues could arise. Officials from the GAO will be testifying today before the House Subcommittee on Higher Education to discuss the recommendations laid out in their report.

Missed Warnings And Delayed Action

The GAO report describes a pattern of warning signs that were ignored by the Department of Education and the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), the agency tasked with managing FAFSA.

According to the report, by August 2022, FSA officials had already adjusted their schedules for the 2024–2025 FAFSA cycle, pushing contractor deadlines from October to December 2023. Yet it wasn’t until March 2023 that they publicly admitted to the delay, a move that disrupted college planning timelines for students across the country.

Despite these warning signs, FSA launched the new FAFSA form in December 2023 without adequately addressing major system deficiencies.The result to families was that even when the form launched on December 28, many families couldn’t file the form until as late as March 2024.

The GAO revealed that 18 out of 25 key system requirements, including the ability to finalize aid eligibility and distribute results to schools, had not been met before launch. These delays in processing led to extended wait times and created significant obstacles for students and families trying to apply for financial aid.

Customer Service Issues

The GAO report also highlighted the extent that families struggled to get support.

During the first five months of the application period, the Department of Education’s call center received more than five million calls—four million of which went unanswered (that’s 74% of calls went unanswered).

With fewer call center staff than in previous years and 200,000 fewer calls answered compared to the prior FAFSA cycle, the system buckled under the volume of inquiries.

The GAO report highlights this customer service failure as a critical issue, stating that many families were left without guidance on resolving technical problems. The FAFSA website often left students to “try again later” when faced with errors, adding confusion and further delaying their ability to complete applications.

One of the most significant communication breakdowns involved the failure to inform over 500,000 students that their federal aid estimates had changed due to corrections in calculation errors.

Technical Failures

The Department of Education’s failure to properly test the new FAFSA processing system compounded the difficulties. Several technical errors persisted well after the form’s launch, with many families relying on incorrect financial aid estimates to make crucial college decisions. These “unresolved defects” were categorized by the GAO as among the most damaging aspects of the failed rollout, eroding public trust in the FAFSA system and federal financial aid.

In one critical defect discovered post-launch, the system overestimated some students’ aid eligibility by failing to factor in family assets, an error that left many students scrambling to adjust their college plans at the last minute.

The report also points to severe leadership deficiencies within the Department of Education, particularly in its Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). The office, which is responsible for overseeing IT projects like FAFSA, had six different CIOs since the FAFSA overhaul began in 2021. According to the GAO, this lack of consistent leadership hindered effective oversight and contributed to the mismanagement of the project.

Recommendations For The Future

The GAO has made six recommendations to the Department of Education on the technology front to avoid a repeat of this year’s errors. They also made seven recommendations to the Department of Education to improve the actual FAFSA process based on this year’s problems. Those recommendations include:

1. Identify and connect with students who did not submit a FAFSA application this cycle (2024-25) due to delays and technical issues, and to provide them with the information they need to apply during the upcoming cycle (2025-26).
2. The Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid should review the FAFSA application process to identify ways to reduce the burden on students and families by addressing the remaining technical issues and streamlining the process for parent or spouse contributors to reduce the total time it takes to complete the FAFSA form.
3. The Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid should overhaul its submission process for students whose parent or spouse contributors do not have Social Security numbers to address additional
   application barriers.
4. The Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid should improve translation services by providing a clear path to support for languages other than English and Spanish through the call center menu
   and progress toward making the FAFSA application available in languages other than English and Spanish.
5. The Office of Federal Student Aid should plan for and ensure hiring of sufficient staff to increase capacity at the Federal Student Aid Information Center call center to be able to meet call demand and improve customer service.
6. The Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid should develop a comprehensive plan for providing FAFSA applicants with timely updates on the status of their application and solutions to technical
   barriers.
7. The Chief Operating Officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid should develop policies to communicate key milestones of the 2025-26 FAFSA and future cycles to colleges and stakeholders in a timely and reliable
   manner.

Without addressing these systemic issues, the report warns, the 2025-2026 FAFSA cycle is likely to face similar delays and technical challenges.

Richard Cordray, former Chief Operating Officer of the FSA, resigned in April following backlash over the troubled rollout. The Department has since announced a December 2024 launch for the next FAFSA form, pushing back the timeline to allow for further testing and improvements. However, as students and colleges prepare for the next application cycle, the GAO’s report casts doubt on whether enough has been done to prevent another chaotic year for financial aid applicants.

The Department of Education is expected to respond to the GAO’s recommendations in the coming weeks as scrutiny from Congress intensifies. With millions of students depending on FAFSA to afford college, it’s important that the Department of Education resolves these issues quickly.

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