NASFAA Statement on ED's 2025-26 FAFSA Launch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Hugh Ferguson
Managing Editor, NASFAA
[email protected]
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 21, 2024 — Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced that the 2025-26 FAFSA is officially live and that all students can now submit their forms for the upcoming academic year.
Now that the Department has completed its beta testing period, students and families can access the 2025-26 FAFSA form in a live environment. Starting today, students and families can also complete a paper form.
NASFAA has consistently called on the department to remain transparent in its testing and launch plans for the 2025-26 FAFSA. Today's announcement that the beta testing period has come to a close and that the form is fully functional and live will help ensure that students and families have the opportunity to complete the form in a more timely manner than last year.
Following today's news, NASFAA Interim President & CEO Beth Maglione released the following statement:
"We urge Federal Student Aid (FSA) to maintain maximum transparency in all communications that impact financial aid for students, institutions, and other stakeholders. This year's FAFSA beta rollout process exemplifies the kind of proactive disclosure our members need to effectively prepare for administering aid.
NASFAA recommends that the Department continue the end-to-end testing efforts introduced during the 2025-26 FAFSA cycle on an annual basis. Comprehensive platform testing for 2025-26 appears to have mitigated some of the issues seen in last year's bumpy rollout of the redesigned "Better FAFSA."
The work, however, is far from complete. In the weeks and months ahead, we will closely monitor the resolution of outstanding FAFSA functionality issues deferred to future updates. These include the requirement for students from mixed-status families to manually enter income information, as well as addressing other concerns like confusing contributor invitations and incorrect messaging about Pell Grant eligibility.
Adopting a practice of underpromising and overdelivering on implementation timelines, while maintaining the highest level of transparency, will help rebuild trust between the Department and institutions of higher education.
We hope the lessons from this year and last will inform best practices that ensure an even smoother FAFSA cycle for students, families, and aid offices in the future."
For students and families who aren't ready yet to file their application, NASFAA has outlined key steps that they can use to prepare.
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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.
Publication Date: 11/21/2024
