"Nobody wants to see a sequel to the devastating federal-aid crisis of 2024, " The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

"But will we get one anyway?

The question has been looming over higher education for months. And this week marks the beginning of a crucial new chapter in the continuing saga of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. What happens next will likely determine whether the next financial-aid cycle gets off to a promising start, albeit two months later than usual — or whether another round of headaches is coming..."

"The disastrous rollout of the 2024-25 FAFSA wasn’t just a collection of technical failures. It was also a series of communication breakdowns, as new findings from the U.S. Government Accountability Office released last week made clear. For instance, the department apparently knew major FAFSA-processing delays were inevitable long before January 30. That was when it informed colleges that they wouldn’t start receiving processed FAFSAs at the end of January, as previously promised; instead, they had to wait until mid-March.

That shocking revelation disrupted colleges’ financial-aid timelines — and demoralized financial-aid officers already scrambling to overcome delays in the FAFSA process. 'Some of the frustration that we felt was really about those 11th-hour announcements,' Beth Maglione, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), told The Chronicle on Monday. 'There was a problem with communication feeling disingenuous. Sometimes, bad news would be buried deep inside otherwise straightforward announcements.'

The department said in a news release on Monday that it is “committed to sharing information about the FAFSA beta broadly with all stakeholders.” And it plans to provide regular updates about its progress online.

Maglione said she was cautiously optimistic that the department and the Federal Student Aid office, known as FSA, would be more transparent in the months ahead. 'We’re going to be watching to see if they carry out their commitment to this notion of working in public and informing the community of how the testing is going, what bugs they’re finding,' she said. 'That’s new and different, and we are really hopeful that that will keep our members in the know as we move forward.'

Resolving problems quickly will be crucial.

Telling people about the FAFSA problems that students and colleges encounter is one thing; fixing them is another.

'We’ll be watching for bugs being resolved from one round of testing to the next,' Maglione said. 'Hopefully, the list of issues doesn’t just keep growing, and we’re actually seeing progress on resolving them.'

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: 9/30/2024