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A group of five higher education organizations sent a letter Tuesday to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recommending the Department of Education push back the release date for next year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid to Dec. 1.
“The launch date is only a piece of the puzzle. It’s also essential that the form be fully functional, reliable, and predictable for all students,” the letter reads. “As we quickly approach the traditional start of the 2025–26 FAFSA application year, October 1, we are wrestling with the trade-off between timeliness and functionality and have concluded that the consequences of releasing a product that does not come with full end-to-end functionality for students, families, state agencies and aid administrators would be too great.”
Two of the letter’s signatories—the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and the National College Access Network—had previously urged the department to work toward an Oct. 1 release date in order to prevent a repeat of the issues caused by the last academic year’s extensive delays. But in the more recent letter, the groups say that concerns in the financial aid community about the department’s ability to launch on that date with a complete, reliable form prompted them to change course.
“We did not come to this decision lightly,” a NASFAA spokesperson wrote in a statement accompanying the letter. “It is our understanding there is no path to an October 1 FAFSA release that is user-tested, fully functional, and allows for processing within one to three days. Furthermore, releasing the form in advance of a working processing system would delay the ability to process FAFSAs correctly and in a timely manner, and introduce errors to the system that could be prevented with more time to identify and address issues.”
The letter goes on to stress the importance of “significant testing” to identify potential issues with next year’s FAFSA and remedy them before the launch date. It also urges the department not to wait much longer than Dec. 1 to release the form, as “it would be untenable for students and schools to start the 2025–2026 financial aid process in 2025.”
The push for a delayed Dec. 1 launch comes just weeks after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce advanced a bill that would mandate an Oct. 1 release date for the FAFSA, this year and in perpetuity.
