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The Department of Education has reassured schools and students that improvements are being made to the financial aid process, following reports that some colleges have seen a drop in enrollment due to problems with the financial aid process.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he is “very confident” that families will be able to apply for federal financial aid starting Dec. 1, just weeks after officials pushed back the start date for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, by two months to Dec. 1 for the 2025-26 school year.
The move is intended to give some students and schools time to test online applications after months of problems and delays halted the college application process for millions of students this year.
“We have to do better, and we will do better,” Cardona told NBC News this week. Going forward, he promised, the application experience will be “simpler. It will take about 15, 20 minutes.”
Many higher education officials say the impact of months of hardship is already showing in enrollment figures.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speaks at the National Action Network’s national convention in New York City on April 12, 2023.
Jin Ah Moon | Reuters
About three-quarters of the 384 private colleges that responded to a recent survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges said the FAFSA issue had changed the composition of their freshmen class.
According to a summary of the July survey results that NAICU plans to continue through September, 43% said their freshman cohort is smaller than previous cohorts. The 850-school association told NBC News that 18% of respondents reported that the FAFSA issue had reduced the racial or ethnic diversity of their freshman class, and 27% said they had seen a decrease in financial aid recipients.
The Department of Education acknowledges that this year’s FAFSA rollout “has been challenging for students, families, and higher education institutions,” a spokesperson said in response to the survey findings, but added that the department cannot independently verify NAICU’s unpublished data. “The department will not rest until every eligible student receives the help they need.”
The FAFSA issues pushed decision dates and aid releases far beyond the traditional May 1 deadline for many students. Most of the issues have been resolved, but campus officials are fed up and say the new Dec. 1 date must be met at all costs.
“It is imperative that the department meet its delivery date with a complete launch and fully functional FAFSA. ‘On or before December 1’ must mean on or before December 1,” Mark Becker, president and CEO of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Colleges, said in a statement this month.
I want to close the Department of Education and return education to the states.
The delay in Donald Trump’s launch means that most households will not be able to begin their survey until several weeks after the presidential election, in which the fate of the Department of Education will be on the ballot.
Former President
Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have proposed dismantling the agency that assesses students’ eligibility for federal aid (a process many schools use to prepare their own applications) and awards Pell grants and federal student loans to low-income undergraduates.
“I want to shut down the Department of Education and return it to the states,” Trump said this month in a chat on X, the social media platform of Republican donor and billionaire Elon Musk.
Cardona declined to comment on the election, but said, “We will continue to fight to make higher education accessible to more students and not leave them with a lifetime of debt.”
“Last year was a little challenging,” he acknowledged. “We learned from it.” In the meantime, he urged applicants for the 2025-26 school year to get their FSA IDs ready. You can get updates by email by visiting studentaid.gov.
In May, Cardona announced a “comprehensive review” of the federal student aid office that oversees the FAFSA and promised “transformational change” in the department. As of this week, officials have processed 14.2 million FAFSAs, with no outstanding cases, and the number of completed applications has decreased by just 2.8% since last year. But the National College Attainment Network says the decline is even bigger, closer to 10%.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators praised the Department of Education for listening to administrators and “providing a timetable for the fall,” but the group’s interim president and CEO, Beth McLeone, urged the government to get things right all at once for the next school year.
“The fact that we are still reeling from the introduction of the FAFSA this year demonstrates how critical it is that this process is thoroughly tested from start to finish and rolled out as a system rather than a piecemeal approach,” she said in a statement this month.
Kristi Childs prepares to fill out the FAFSA with her 17-year-old daughter, Hanalise Yarbrough, who is just starting her senior year of high school in DeSoto County, Mississippi. Childs said she had a hard time filling out the forms for her 19-year-old twins, Madison and Mason Yarbrough, last year. Both are sophomores in college, but the latter is taking a semester off.
“I hope they fix the bugs and make it actually usable and ready to get results quickly,” Childs said.
Hanalis plans to attend Northwest Mississippi Community College for two years before transferring to John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, but she said she’s always been “worried” about the cost of college.
“To be honest, I didn’t know much about the FAFSA. I took a college and career readiness class in high school, but it was all really confusing,” she said.
Hanalise is hoping to make it big on band scholarships as a flautist, but her mother said she needs federal support.
“We still have room and board, books, meals, and all the other things we absolutely need to take care of,” Childs said, adding that a smooth and timely FAFSA process is “the only way our family can afford to send another child to college.”
