As hundreds of thousands of households have already realized, this 12 months’s Free Utility for Federal Scholar Assist stands out as the best ever. Many individuals full it in 15 minutes or much less. Households who need assistance connect with our name heart shortly. Within the first six weeks of availability, 3.5 million college students have already submitted their varieties.
The story was very completely different a 12 months in the past. When the 2024–25 FAFSA kind launched in December 2023, many college students and oldsters struggled to finish it attributable to bugs, delays and complicated directions. Our name heart was overwhelmed. The U.S. Division of Schooling was not able to course of FAFSA varieties, forcing many faculties to delay monetary support affords and admissions deadlines.
Because it was created greater than 30 years in the past, the FAFSA has at all times been notoriously tough. Not solely did it create complications for about 17 million households annually, however an estimated one million Pell-eligible college students annually by no means crammed it out—and there’s no method of understanding what number of extra folks may need enrolled in faculty if they’d utilized for obtainable support.
To deal with a few of these challenges, in December 2020 Congress handed a legislation to design a brand new FAFSA that drew knowledge from federal tax data. Sadly, implementing this legislation was tremendously complicated.
The Schooling Division got down to change or modernize greater than 20 pc programs—some older than the mother and father filling out the FAFSA—and implement new eligibility, privateness and safety guidelines. All this work was achieved with a frozen finances and with no security web: If the FAFSA system wasn’t working, no alternate options had been attainable with out one other act of Congress. College students wouldn’t be capable to obtain federal monetary support.
This strategy is all too frequent within the federal authorities: Congress specifies in nice element precisely what ought to be achieved and by when, and businesses allocate the work throughout groups of workers and contractors. Earlier than programming begins, federal businesses codify these particulars in contract modifications, privateness disclosures and different authorized agreements—every of which requires months of procedural steps to amend. In distinction, the personal sector makes use of a extra incremental, agile strategy to complicated software program, permitting builders to measure their progress, seek the advice of prospects and companions, and regulate their plans as they go.
The Schooling Division’s problematic historical past of outsourcing key capabilities meant we didn’t have the in-house experience—just like the product managers, software program builders, designers and different specialists—that any group must information such a posh know-how mission. It was almost unimaginable for the division to independently take a look at the programs or repeatedly assess the progress of our contractors. And after we found work that was incomplete or riddled with bugs, utilizing our restricted instruments for holding contractors accountable typically risked backfiring by scary slowdowns, renegotiations and protests simply because the mission neared essential deadlines.
Our technique to show issues round had 4 major elements.
First, we wanted to construct a workforce shortly. So as to add to devoted Federal Scholar Assist workers, we recruited expertise from the Faculty Board and the U.S. Digital Service and added capability at contractors. We recruited senior data know-how workers to completely strengthen the FAFSA. The workforce labored nights, weekends and holidays to repair the technical challenges and supply help to college students and faculties. Though we first started increasing the FAFSA workforce in late 2022, in hindsight I want we had begun even earlier and expanded much more shortly.
Second, we carried out a sturdy testing technique so we may discover bugs as shortly as attainable. Earlier than we launched the 2025–26 kind, we invited greater than 150,000 college students and households to beta take a look at the system from finish to finish.
Third, we elevated transparency to college students, households and our companions. We held common press calls and shared our progress publicly. We repeatedly briefed exterior companions and solicited their assist figuring out issues and supporting monetary support advisers. We additionally drastically elevated staffing at our name facilities. Wait occasions that had been typically 15 to twenty minutes, with excessive abandonment charges, now common lower than a minute.
Lastly, for the primary time, we offered greater than $50 million for faculties, college districts and nonprofits to course of FAFSA functions and improve submission charges from college students, significantly these in underserved communities.
All of those efforts paid off: Greater than 5 p.c extra college students acquired federal monetary support this fall than a 12 months in the past. At present, 94 p.c of those that submit a 2025–26 kind say they’re glad with their expertise.
Nonetheless, our job isn’t achieved. Regardless of delivering monetary support to extra college students over all, we’re serving about 2 to three p.c fewer latest highschool seniors. We have to make the shape simpler for college students and faculties, together with by permitting faculties to submit batches of corrections at one time. And the division must launch subsequent 12 months’s kind on time on Oct. 1.
We now have a workforce of profession specialists in place with the mandatory capabilities to proceed to shepherd the FAFSA into the longer term. The incoming administration will inherit a well-performing system and have the time and sources they should meet that deadline.
No overhaul of a posh system—particularly a authorities system that has existed for many years—is ever straightforward, and the reason for these challenges isn’t easy. However the ensuing modifications will probably be key to serving to hundreds of thousands extra college students obtain their goals.
