FAFSA Processing Delayed Until March

The U.S. Department of Education announced on January 30, 2024 that processing of the FAFSA will be further delayed until March as it corrects the missing inflationary adjustments in the financial aid formula.

The FAFSA Simplification Act, which was part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, requires the federal financial aid formula to be adjusted for inflation. The U.S. Department of Education initially said that they would not be updating the formula until the 2025-2026 FAFSA. But, this would cause millions of students to qualify for less aid than they deserve. 

The U.S. Department of Education has changed course, deciding to update the formula after all. Updating the formula will enable students to receive an additional $1.8 billion in federal student aid, in addition to more financial aid from state and college grant programs. 

But, updating the Federal Processing System (FPS) to implement the corrected financial aid formula will cause additional delays in implementing the simplified FAFSA. 

This is a real mess. 

It is unclear why it takes so long to update the financial aid formula. If the system had been designed in a modular manner, it should have taken less than a day to implement the changes.

Long Delay In Processing Submitted FAFSAs

Colleges were supposed to receive the Institutional Student Information Records (ISIR), which contain a subset of FAFSA information, including the Student Aid Index (SAI), by the end of January, which was already four months late. Now they will have to wait an additional month and a half. 

The U.S. Department of Education will start sending ISIRS to schools and state agencies in the first half of March. This does not mean that all ISIRs will be transmitted by the Ides of March, just that the process will start by then. There may be additional delays. 

Impact Of The FAFSA Delays

The five-and-a-half month delay in making FAFSA information available to colleges will wreak havoc on the college admission and financial aid process. 

High school seniors are unlikely to receive financial aid offers until at least April, and maybe not until May or June. 

They may have to choose a college without knowing how much it will cost them. 

Students are unable to make corrections to their FAFSAs or add more colleges until the colleges receive the ISIRs. 

Colleges may have to delay the deadline for accepting an offer of admission well beyond the usual May 1 Decision Day. 

A small number of colleges use the CSS Profile form for awarding their own financial aid funds. These colleges may be able to provide students with estimated financial aid packages. But, other colleges are just stuck waiting for the FAFSA. 

Fewer 2024-2025 FAFSAs Have Been Submitted This Year

The U.S. Department of Education announced that 3.1 million FAFSAs have been submitted as of the end of January. But, that compares with more than 6 million FAFSAs as of January 31 last year. 

The delayed availability of the FAFSA may have contributed to a lower number of FAFSAs being submitted.

The new FAFSA has also been plagued with problems, not all of which have been resolved. Some of these problems are preventing students from submitting the FAFSA. For example, some parents have been unable to obtain an FSA ID, which is required to sign the FAFSA electronically. Of a dozen problems listed on the FAFSA Issue Alerts page, only three have been resolved. Many more problems do not appear on this page. 

Other Concerns

The maximum Federal Pell Grant is not yet available because Congress has not yet completed the appropriations process. This may force the FAFSA data to be reprocessed if the new maximum grant amount is not yet available by March. 

Members of Congress are concerned about the delays. Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and more than two dozen of her colleagues in the House and Senate have asked the U.S Government Accountability Office (GAO) to open an investigation into the delayed rollout of the new FAFSA.