GAO Warns of Future FAFSA Failures After Botched Launch

In a pair of scathing stories, the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO) has revealed the important missteps taken by the Division of Training throughout final 12 months’s Free Utility for Federal Pupil Support (FAFSA) rollout. 

The stories, launched at present (you will discover them right here and right here), particulars how systemic failures within the Division’s planning, communication, and testing led to a disastrous implementation of the brand new FAFSA kind, which has left hundreds of thousands of scholars and households struggling to entry important monetary assist. One report focuses on the technical implementation of the simplified FAFSA kind and the opposite on the monetary assist side of the FAFSA rollout.

The findings additionally increase alarms in regards to the upcoming FAFSA cycle for the 2025-2026 educational 12 months, with GAO officers warning that except vital reforms are made, comparable points may come up. Officers from the GAO might be testifying at present earlier than the Home Subcommittee on Greater Training to debate the suggestions specified by their report.

Missed Warnings And Delayed Motion

The GAO report describes a sample of warning indicators that have been ignored by the Division of Training and the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support (FSA), the company tasked with managing FAFSA.

In line with the report, by August 2022, FSA officers had already adjusted their schedules for the 2024–2025 FAFSA cycle, pushing contractor deadlines from October to December 2023. But it wasn’t till March 2023 that they publicly admitted to the delay, a transfer that disrupted faculty planning timelines for college kids throughout the nation.

Regardless of these warning indicators, FSA launched the brand new FAFSA kind in December 2023 with out adequately addressing main system deficiencies.The outcome to households was that even when the shape launched on December 28, many households could not file the shape till as late as March 2024.

The GAO revealed that 18 out of 25 key system necessities, together with the power to finalize assist eligibility and distribute outcomes to varsities, had not been met earlier than launch. These delays in processing led to prolonged wait instances and created vital obstacles for college kids and households making an attempt to use for monetary assist.

Buyer Service Points

The GAO report additionally highlighted the extent that households struggled to get assist.

In the course of the first 5 months of the appliance interval, the Division of Training’s name middle obtained greater than 5 million calls—4 million of which went unanswered (that is 74% of calls went unanswered).

With fewer name middle workers than in earlier years and 200,000 fewer calls answered in comparison with the prior FAFSA cycle, the system buckled underneath the amount of inquiries.

The GAO report highlights this customer support failure as a important concern, stating that many households have been left with out steering on resolving technical issues. The FAFSA web site usually left college students to “strive once more later” when confronted with errors, including confusion and additional delaying their capability to finish functions.

One of the vital vital communication breakdowns concerned the failure to tell over 500,000 college students that their federal assist estimates had modified as a consequence of corrections in calculation errors.

Technical Failures

The Division of Training’s failure to correctly check the brand new FAFSA processing system compounded the difficulties. A number of technical errors endured effectively after the shape’s launch, with many households counting on incorrect monetary assist estimates to make essential faculty selections. These “unresolved defects” have been categorized by the GAO as among the many most damaging facets of the failed rollout, eroding public belief within the FAFSA system and federal monetary assist.

In a single important defect found post-launch, the system overestimated some college students’ assist eligibility by failing to think about household belongings, an error that left many college students scrambling to regulate their faculty plans on the final minute.

The report additionally factors to extreme management deficiencies inside the Division of Training, significantly in its Workplace of the Chief Data Officer (CIO). The workplace, which is answerable for overseeing IT tasks like FAFSA, had six totally different CIOs because the FAFSA overhaul started in 2021. In line with the GAO, this lack of constant management hindered efficient oversight and contributed to the mismanagement of the challenge.

Suggestions For The Future

The GAO has made six suggestions to the Division of Training on the expertise entrance to keep away from a repeat of this 12 months’s errors. In addition they made seven suggestions to the Division of Training to enhance the precise FAFSA course of based mostly on this 12 months’s issues. These suggestions embody:

1. Establish and join with college students who didn’t submit a FAFSA utility this cycle (2024-25) as a consequence of delays and technical points, and to supply them with the data they should apply throughout the upcoming cycle (2025-26).
2. The Chief Working Officer of the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to assessment the FAFSA utility course of to determine methods to cut back the burden on college students and households by addressing the remaining technical points and streamlining the method for mother or father or partner contributors to cut back the entire time it takes to finish the FAFSA kind.
3. The Chief Working Officer of the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to overhaul its submission course of for college kids whose mother or father or partner contributors shouldn’t have Social Safety numbers to handle further
   utility boundaries.
4. The Chief Working Officer of the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to enhance translation companies by offering a transparent path to assist for languages apart from English and Spanish by way of the decision middle menu
   and progress towards making the FAFSA utility accessible in languages apart from English and Spanish.
5. The Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to plan for and guarantee hiring of ample workers to extend capability on the Federal Pupil Support Data Middle name middle to have the ability to meet name demand and enhance customer support.
6. The Chief Working Officer of the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to develop a complete plan for offering FAFSA candidates with well timed updates on the standing of their utility and options to technical
   boundaries.
7. The Chief Working Officer of the Workplace of Federal Pupil Support ought to develop insurance policies to speak key milestones of the 2025-26 FAFSA and future cycles to high schools and stakeholders in a well timed and dependable
   method.

With out addressing these systemic points, the report warns, the 2025-2026 FAFSA cycle is more likely to face comparable delays and technical challenges.

Richard Cordray, former Chief Working Officer of the FSA, resigned in April following backlash over the troubled rollout. The Division has since introduced a December 2024 launch for the subsequent FAFSA kind, pushing again the timeline to permit for additional testing and enhancements. Nevertheless, as college students and faculties put together for the subsequent utility cycle, the GAO’s report casts doubt on whether or not sufficient has been executed to stop one other chaotic 12 months for monetary assist candidates.

The Division of Training is anticipated to answer the GAO’s suggestions within the coming weeks as scrutiny from Congress intensifies. With hundreds of thousands of scholars relying on FAFSA to afford faculty, it is vital that the Division of Training resolves these points shortly.

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