FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Allie Arcese
Director of Communications, NASFAA
(202) 785-6954
[email protected]

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 22, 2024 — Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that a miscalculation in the formula of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) resulted in incorrect financial need information for several hundred thousand students being sent to colleges and universities. As a result, those records will eventually need to be reprocessed by the Department and resent to schools, leading to further delays in these students receiving their financial aid offers. 

In response to this news, NASFAA President & CEO Justin Draeger issued the following statement: 

“This is another unforced error that will likely cause more processing delays for students. 

At this stage in the game and after so many delays, every error adds up and will be felt acutely by every student who is counting on need-based financial aid to make their postsecondary dreams a reality. As of today, we do not know when the Department is planning on reprocessing these applications.

As always, schools will work in good faith with our federal colleagues to get information to students as soon as possible, but let’s not make any mistake — schools can only work with valid and correct data that is provided to them from the U.S. Department of Education. It is not feasible or realistic to send  out incorrect FAFSA data and ask thousands of schools to make real-time calculations and adjustments to the federal formula on the school side.”

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About NASFAA
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) is a nonprofit membership organization that represents more than 29,000 financial aid professionals at approximately 3,000 colleges, universities, and career schools across the country. NASFAA member institutions serve nine out of every 10 undergraduates in the U.S. Based in Washington, D.C., NASFAA is the only national association with a primary focus on student aid legislation, regulatory analysis, and training for financial aid administrators.