Department of Education Admits ‘Challenging Year’ for FAFSA: ‘We’re Not Where We’d Like to Be’

The Department of Education acknowledged Thursday that it has been a “challenging year” for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process, as officials are desperate to fill out more forms.

“We are not at the point we would like to be,” Education Undersecretary James Kvaal told reporters before revealing that about 7.7 million FAFSA applications have been received from college applicants. About 18 million forms are filled out in a typical year.

“Here’s my message: If you’ve been waiting for the dust to settle before filling out a FAFSA, make a correction, now is the time,” Kvaal said. “If you are a student waiting for your college to send you a financial aid offer, know that you are not alone. Colleges are working hard to get you the information you need.”

Of the FAFSA requests, 1.2 million need corrections from students or taxpayers, mostly signatures or permission to receive tax data from the IRS. Another 700,000 FAFSA forms have errors due to incorrect tabulation of asset contributions. Lastly, 1.2 million orders with incorrect tax data were processed.

Kvaal noted that some colleges have been able to submit financial aid packages, while others are awaiting further corrections before beginning the process. The department expects all necessary corrections to be made by early next month.

The department noted that during this week’s FAFSA Action Week, several workshops and other events were organized across the country to ensure students complete the forms.

The announcement comes as advocates, students and colleges are frustrated by the lack of accountability the department has shown over the failed implementation of the FAFSA since the updated forms were first released last year.

Schools have had to push back their decision deadlines, which normally happens on May 1st, due to all the delays in the FAFSA process.

While FAFSA applications typically begin in October and some schools have all of their offers posted as early as March, this time schools didn’t even receive the information they needed to distribute financial aid packages until last month, and many of them were flawed.