"This year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) saga has taken another turn after the Department of Education sent incorrect financial aid information to colleges and universities, possibly creating more delays for students and putting schools in a compromising situation," The Hill reports.

..."FAFSA has had approximately 6.6 million applicants so far this year, with officials still hoping to reach the average of 17 million seen in a normal year.

'The trust and the faith in the records that they’re seeing … isn’t there from the institutional standpoint,' said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 'Institutions will be discussing internally, you know, ‘At what point do we move forward with issuing offers? Because we just don’t know if there will be more announcements.’

'And institutions really don’t want to be in a position of sending out aid offers and then having to redact those aid offers,' she added. 

Students are experiencing whiplash as deadlines keep getting pushed back.

McCarthy suspects that even for those whose forms were not inaccurate, this mix-up could cause delays. While the department did let schools know which applications were error-free, colleges may wait to send out their aid offers until all the forms are correct.  

'Hopefully schools can use those lists to then start to work on aid offers for those applicants, but all of that just adds additional steps, some manual workarounds to the process,' McCarthy said."

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 4/4/2024