Between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school year, the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) underwent serious changes in order to ease the process for students across the country. However, these changes have proven to be more complicated than many could have expected.
The FAFSA has always been a way for many students to get vital financial assistance in order to help them afford attendance at different universities. This year, FAFSA announced that there would be several changes coming to the form that affects so many. However, it became clear that there were going to be substantial setbacks when the form was no longer going to be available on October 1, and would instead be released at the very end of December, starting with a ‘soft launch’ period. This soft launch allowed students and families to work on the form during certain times, with many breaks for site maintenance in between work sessions.
Andrea Janssen works as the director of the Financial Education Program at the University of Montana, helping students and their families with financial literacy and paying for college. Janssen assists students with any problems they may have and has worked through much of the trouble that has been caused this year. “The biggest challenge, I would say, for the students and families this year is getting into their FAFSA account with their FSA ID,” she said. “Students might have created one, or maybe a parent has, but the information might have been mixed up, causing problems verifying your information and recovery. Parents who have made an account in the past might have difficulties recovering/resetting their password as the phone number or email once used is no longer accessible.”
Anyone who planned on filling out the form was required to make a Studentaid.gov account that allowed access to the form. Setting up this account requires time to process which can be yet another setback for those who have already been waiting to complete the form for months. However, this was the first of many challenges that users might have faced. “It kicked [my dad] out the first couple times he tried to do it,” said senior Chloe McCulloch. “It kept giving him new dates of when he would be able to log in and he seemed frustrated.”
“I tried to get in many many times,” said senior Lucy Johnstone. Johnstone encountered a problem that did not allow her to log in for over a week. “The solution to it was to just not type in your address, so I was able to get in, but then I wasn’t able to type my address again so they just don’t have my address.”
Janssen says the process has been difficult all around. “As you know, the FAFSA launch has been difficult for the students but challenging for the Financial Aid teams. There have been trainings and webinars that I have been a part of. I know the Financial Aid team has been working on understanding the software that works with the FAFSA form.” However, Janssen sees this process improving in the near future. “We hope that once Federal Student Aid releases the FAFSA application to the schools, they have time to test the software to help them process the FAFSA on time.”
For many, it wasn’t necessarily filling out the form that became the most stressful part of the experience, but dealing with the delays and anticipation for receiving financial aid information. Because of these delays and the problems that have occurred, many colleges are even changing the date that students are required to reply about their admissions decisions from May 1 to June 1.
While many changes may have caused problems, there have been some that are helpful to those who filled out the form. “I was most excited about the new Financial Aid Direct Data Exchange. The Direct Data Exchange allows families to provide consent to have their tax information brought over from the IRS and not answer many questions about their finances,” said Janssen. This feature makes the process of providing financial information much easier. “Before, there was a Data Retrieval Tool where your information had to match the tax returns exactly. Even with your information matching, the Data Retrieval Tool might not work. With the Financial Aid Direct Data Exchange, the FAFSA is about 30 questions shorter compared to years past. Many students and families are surprised and concerned when I tell them they completed the FASFA. They said, ‘They didn’t enter any financial information. How is it completed?’ Because they provided consent, their tax information was imported automatically on the form,” she said.
While FAFSA tries to make a better form for the following years, challenges continue to be posed for many of the students trying to receive financial aid.
