By Maria Carrasco, NASFAA Staff Reporter
The Department of Education (ED) on Tuesday provided NASFAA’s 2025 Leadership & Legislative Conference & Expo attendees with the latest information on the launch of the 2026-27 FAFSA, updates concerning the previous aid cycles, and a debrief on the status of the student loan repayment system.
The general session at NASFAA’s leadership conference included a panel of career employees at ED, including the department’s new executive director of the FAFSA program at Federal Student Aid (FSA), Aaron Lemon-Strauss, Kerri Moseley-Hobbs, policy specialist at ED, Eric Hardy, enterprise management systems of business operations at FSA, and Linnea Hengst, program specialist for policy implementation and oversight at ED.
A key update from Lemon-Strauss is that the 2026-27 FAFSA will begin beta testing in “early” August, and between August and September, community-based organizations will be beta testing the 2026-27 FAFSA. By October 1, 2025, the FAFSA will be released to the public, which is now mandated by the FAFSA Deadline Act. Lemon-Strauss also reminded attendees that the public comment period for the 2026-27 FAFSA is now open. Members of the public have until Monday, April 7, to submit comments on a draft version of the FAFSA form.
The panel also went through planned changes for the 2026-27 FAFSA, including the question on gender identification due to President Donald Trump’s executive order, which will also be updated for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSAs. Lemon-Strauss clarified that the FAFSA Simplification Act requires ED to ask about sex in the FAFSA. NASFAA is currently working on an in-depth follow-up article to clarify questions members may have.
Other improvements to the FAFSA that are underway at ED include simplifying the process to invite contributors, shortening the list of required data for married students, and improving the accuracy of manually entered data.
The panel also highlighted improvements already implemented to the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA, including improving the signature process for students and contributors, discouraging students from selecting to apply for the direct unsubsidized loan only, and more.
Lemon-Strauss also detailed the timeline of batch corrections functionality, which is currently in the beta testing phase and will be released publicly within the first quarter of 2025.
During the session, Lemon-Strauss stressed that financial aid professionals and ED are a FAFSA team and encouraged collaboration between the two.
“As part of Team FAFSA, we need your help,” Lemon-Strauss said. “We need your help to give us feedback. We need your help to push [ED] to make sure that FAFSA becomes a delightful experience.”
Hardy then went through an overview of the student loan repayment plans, including the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan, which is currently halted due to a court injunction.
Hardy clarified that under the court’s injunction, ED is currently prohibited from using the SAVE formula to calculate monthly payments. ED is also prohibited from forgiving loans after the required number of payments under SAVE, Pay As You Earn (PAYE), and Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR) plans. However, Hardy clarified that ED is able to provide time-based forgiveness to eligible borrowers under Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, since it is statutory.
During the session, Hardy shared the current state of each repayment plan. For borrowers enrolled in SAVE, payments are currently suspended and their loans are in a general interest-free forbearance, which will not count toward IDR forgiveness or Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
Borrowers enrolled in SAVE who are required to recertify, are also in an interest-free forbearance that will not count toward IDR forgiveness or PSLF. Hardy clarified that for these borrowers, their anniversary date will be extended until after a version of the SAVE plan is compliant with the court’s injunction or an alternative option can be implemented.
Borrowers who apply for SAVE, or select “lowest monthly payment” on their IDR application, or borrowers with loans on different IDR plans are placed in a one-time processing forbearance for 60 days, after which they will be moved to a general interest-free forbearance. Hardy clarified that the initial 60-day interest-free forbearance does count for IDR forgiveness or PSLF.
Borrowers that are enrolled in IBR, PAYE, and ICR, or borrowers that are enrolled in non-IDR plans are in a regular monthly repayment plan.
The session with ED ended with a question and answer session, which included a discussion on the availability of NSLDS Post-screening Eligibility Changes files. Lemon-Strauss clarified that ED is working on a solution to an issue where institutions with multiple campuses cannot access their files. That solution should be available next week, he said.
On Tuesday, attendees had the opportunity to join sessions on the FAFSA, student retention, financial stability for associations, leadership, advocacy, risk assessment, and more. On Wednesday, attendees will go to Capitol Hill where they will meet with their respective delegations in Congress to advocate for student financial aid.
Be sure to keep up with NASFAA's social media channels throughout the week for updates and photos from the conference, and utilize the hashtag #NASFAALeads25 to keep up with what members are talking about!
Publication Date: 2/12/2025
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