The FAFSA blunders haven’t let up. Now the Education Department has a credibility issue.

USA TODAY

Zachary Schermele

April 3, 2024

Early this year the Education Department shared what appeared to be objectively good news.

Millions of college financial aid forms – commonly referred to as FAFSAs, or Free Applications for Federal Student Aid – had been successfully submitted, the agency said in an announcement on Jan. 30. Federal officials had also updated their aid calculations to make it “as simple and easy as possible for families to get help paying for college,” according to the agency.

But tucked into the fifth paragraph of that bulletin was a troubling tidbit: Colleges and universities would not receive students’ financial aid data until the first half of March, more than a month later than the government had promised.

It was the first time the agency acknowledged the setback, another wrench thrown in the financial aid process for colleges and students. Many schools, it turned out, did not get a critical mass of the records they needed until the end of March.

What’s more, the “update” the department touted as a victory was more of a correction to a massive problem. In crunching the numbers for how much millions of families could afford to pay for college in the next school year, the agency failed to account for inflation. Amid mounting scrutiny, officials course corrected. The January announcement was part of that reset.

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