DAZED AND CONFUSED — It was supposed to be a new, simplified federal student aid form, a redesigned application that would make it easier for millions of families to fill out. It turned out to be an epic flop. The new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, has become a massive election-year headache not only for President Joe Biden’s administration, but for colleges and families just trying to get their kids to college. The idea was noble enough. The complicated student aid form, long the bane of parents and students, was streamlined to allow some prospective students to answer as few as 18 questions, down from more than 100. And the application redesign updated how federal student aid eligibility is determined. More students than ever before were expected to be eligible for more aid, the Education Department touted earlier this year , and the form was supposed to make “it as simple and easy as possible for families to get help paying for college.” Instead, the new FAFSA is wreaking havoc on the college admissions cycle. School counselors have been grappling with a shorter timeline to advise students how to fill out the form, since the Education Department delayed its initial release by nearly three months. Some families have been struggling navigating technical glitches that have barred them from completing the form. Colleges have pushed back their decision day deadlines to make up for the Education Department’s delay in processing the applications. Education Department officials are still working on processing applications and incrementally rolling out vital financial aid data to schools. They’ve promised to send out hundreds of thousands more student aid records to colleges this week. But even after the records are sent to schools, the vast majority of the work colleges do to create financial aid packages is just beginning. Education advocates say it could take at least two weeks for institutions to review the data and send out financial aid offers to students. That’s barring any other issues — college financial aid offices have been navigating new software updates from the Education Department this month and long wait times to get help. At the earliest, some of the most well-resourced colleges may be able to send out aid award letters by mid-April. This means students might only have two weeks to choose a school if their pick hasn’t pushed back their May 1 decision deadline . Without the financial aid data expected to roll out fully this month, colleges can’t even begin to send out financial aid packages to their prospective students. And in turn, families can’t even begin to understand how they will pay for college. The Biden administration’s new FAFSA stems from a mandate to implement a bipartisan law Congress passed in December 2020 that overhauled the federal financial aid formula and mandated a new, simpler FAFSA. So who is to blame for the botched rollout? Lawmakers and administration officials are pointing at each other. The Education Department’s FAFSA debacle has drawn bipartisan criticism from lawmakers who have been demanding answers on when, exactly, the form will be fixed. Republicans have been the most critical of the rollout, arguing that the Education Department did not prioritize implementation of the new form and instead focused on its student loan relief efforts. Meanwhile, some Education Department officials have blamed the sheer complexity of overhauling the form, a lack of adequate funding from Congress and a last-minute change to the financial aid formula after the agency mistakenly failed to properly account for inflation. They are also privately pointing fingers at a major outside vendor, General Dynamics, which was tasked with building out and operating the new FAFSA processing system, for missed deadlines and delays. Wherever the blame lies, the effect the new form, its glitches and its delays are having on the graduating class of 2024’s prospects of heading to college in the fall are stark. FAFSA completion has long been considered correlated with the number of freshmen who show up to campuses in the fall. And through the first week of March, the number of high school seniors filling out the FAFSA was down by more than 30 percent, according to federal data analyzed by the National College Attainment Network, a nonprofit focused on helping students prepare for college. The drop in applications is even steeper at high schools in lower-income communities and those with large shares of Black and Hispanic students. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona isn’t satisfied with those submission numbers, and has urged colleges and school counselors to continue pushing students to fill out the form. “I want all your students filling out FAFSA,” he told school leaders Monday at the Council of the Great City Schools Annual Legislative and Policy Conference. “There is a reason we’re having these headaches and these delays, because it’s simpler now,” Cardona said. “It’s not just a new website. It’s a new formula. We’re expecting more dollars to go out, but they have to submit. The delays, in my opinion, once we get this thing going are … going to be worth it.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at bquilantan@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @biancaquilan .
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