FSA Kicks Off Annual 2024 Virtual Training Conference With a Focus on FAFSA
By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
Federal Student Aid (FSA) kicked off its week-long virtual training conference on Tuesday, touching on important information related to both 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA cycles.
This year’s conference bookends a tumultuous year and follows the launch of two FAFSA cycles. At the end of 2024, the Department of Education (ED) launched the 2024-25 FAFSA, however, it was riddled with errors and technical issues. The 2025-26 FAFSA launched just two weeks ago. So far, the rollout has been much smoother with FSA indicating that 1 million forms have been submitted.
FSA's Acting Chief Operating Officer Denise Carter thanked financial aid professionals and other attendees for their continued support amid issues with the delayed launch of the 2024-25 FAFSA.
“Thank you for your non-stop dedication and heroic efforts as you worked hand-in-hand with us through the 24-25 FAFSA implementation challenges,” Carter said. “Your engagement with students and their families during a very difficult time resulted in millions of students successfully applying for and receiving critical financial aid. And for that, we are grateful.”
The next general session of the virtual conference was focused on FAFSA updates for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 cycles.
Kellis Robbins, program specialist of FSA’s Product Management Group, noted that FSA focused on five main areas to improve the 2025-26 FAFSA from last year’s form. Those areas include: encouraging users to provide their consent and approval to retrieve financial information on the FAFSA form; acknowledging the retrieval of financial data from the IRS immediately following a user providing their consent; rewording question language to ensure dependent students correctly answer the direct unsubsidized loan only question; better facilitating the contributor invitation process; and improving the signature process for all users.
During this general session, Rachel Coghlan, director of FSA’s Application Systems Division, gave several updates on FAFSA processing. Notably, Coghlan said that FSA is processing both online and paper FAFSAs for the 2025-26 cycles.
For online 2025-26 FAFSAs, students and contributors are able to make corrections to their application, Coghlan said. Additionally, institutional corrections for 2025-26 paper FAFSAs are available via the FAFSA Partner Portal, and student corrections for paper forms will be available in “early” 2025.
Coghlan said FSA will be implementing batch institutional corrections functionality via the Electronic Data Exchange (EDE), but did not specify a date. Previously, FSA stated that batch corrections functionality for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA will be available “by the end of first quarter of calendar year 2025.”
Coghlan shared the match rate of IRS data for the 2024-25 FAFSA, with 67% of applications returning IRS data to the FAFSA, and 31.5% of applications returning an indication of being non-filer. As for Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs), the layout of the records do not have any changes, Coghlan said.
Other sessions during the day focused on verification and conflicting information, ISIRs, institutional eligibility to participate in Title IV programs, and changes made to the access, use, and disclosure of FAFSA data and federal tax information (FTI) under FAFSA simplification.
In the session about FAFSA data and FTI, Michael Ruggless, program specialist and data policy lead of FSA’s Policy Implementation and Oversight, did an overview of recently released guidance from FSA.
However, the guidance released by FSA in November only touches on the access, disclosure, and use of FAFSA data — not FTI. Ruggless said FSA will release guidance on the access, disclosure, and use of FTI in the “foreseeable future.”
Part of Ruggless’ presentation included answering frequently asked questions on the use of FAFSA data. Full explanations can be found in the session on the FSA Virtual Training Conference website. Those questions included:
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Can we make any inferences regarding FTI based on the November 7 guidance from FSA about FAFSA data? No.
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Can FAFSA data, including FTI, be used for purposes of IPEDS reporting? Yes.
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What laws govern the access, disclosure, and use of FAFSA data? The Higher Education Act (HEA), as amended, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the Privacy Act.
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True or false? The use of FAFSA data to support other college completion efforts (e.g., academic advising), meets the definition of the application, award, and administration of aid and therefore can be disclosed and used by academic departments? False.
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Can FTI be used to report on the Fiscal Operations Report and Application to Participate (FISAP)? Yes.
Stay tuned to Today’s News this week for updates from the FSA Virtual Training Conference.
Publication Date: 12/4/2024
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