The U.S. Education Department (ED) is again shifting the FAFSA process for the 2025-26 award year. It will still release the form on October 1, as it has previously announced, but for testing with a limited set of students and colleges. It will make the full application available to all students on or before December 1.
“The Department will invite volunteers to participate in the testing period, and over time will make the form available to an increasing number of participants, starting with hundreds and expanding to tens of thousands of applicants,” ED said in a release. “This process will allow the Department to test and resolve issues before making the form available to all students and contributors. Using this approach, the Department will launch full functionality, including submission and back-end processing at the same time.”
The department, which said it will release more details about how the testing period will work, said it will continue to seek feedback from its partners through August listening sessions and a new formal request for information that it will release next week.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) was among several higher education organizations asking ED for the delay to ensure that the department launches a tested, functional system. NASFAA Interim President Beth Maglione said she hopes the department will continue keeping student aid officials abreast of the process so they can plan and provide accurate advice and assistance to students.
“The fact that we are still, to this day, dealing with the aftershocks of this year’s FAFSA rollout shows just how imperative it is that the process is thoroughly tested from end to end and launched as a system, not in a piecemeal manner,” she said.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, ripped into the department for its new approach, reiterating her charge that ED has been too focused on its plan to erase student loan debt rather than on the FAFSA issues, which college officials worry will affect fall enrollments. Republicans have also introduced the FAFSA Deadline Act, which would move the statutory deadline for releasing the FAFSA to October 1. The House advanced its bill out of committee last month.
“We’ve seen this movie before, and spoiler alert, it was a disaster: students and institutions are still reeling from the Biden-Harris administration’s missed deadlines and broken promises during last year’s ‘launch,’” Foxx said. “Needing yet another delay to ‘fix’ issues for the second consecutive year reveals yet another layer of the Department’s mismanagement of FASFA these past four years.”
