2025–26 FAFSA will launch forward of schedule

The 2025–26 Free Utility for Federal Pupil Help is on monitor to launch forward of its Dec. 1 deadline, Training Division officers introduced on a press name Thursday afternoon, doubtless round Nov. 22—although the officers mentioned they couldn’t verify an actual date. 

The division launched this 12 months’s FAFSA in phases to check the shape for bugs and person compatibility points. Officers mentioned the rollout entered its fourth and last testing section Wednesday, after preliminary testing obtained cautiously constructive suggestions from households and school entry teams.

“As soon as we’re happy that your entire system and assist programs are working easily with excessive volumes of customers, we are going to exit testing and announce the official launch of the 2025–26 FAFSA,” Underneath Secretary James Kvaal mentioned on the decision.

Up to now, greater than 14,000 college students have accomplished the FAFSA and 1,850 faculties have obtained about 81,000 scholar kinds. Kvaal mentioned that if developments maintain, about 3.5 p.c extra college students are on monitor to obtain monetary support than final 12 months, even earlier than the official launch.

All eyes are on the FAFSA after final 12 months’s overhaul and bungled rollout of the appliance led to months of delays and a big decline in completion charges, dampening first-year enrollment this fall. Final 12 months, the shape launched on the finish of December, with a slew of technical errors and glitches that flummoxed college students and stymied monetary support workplaces.

This 12 months the shape will launch over a month earlier—and officers say it will likely be totally purposeful from the leap.

“We’re in a radically completely different and higher place than final cycle,” mentioned Jeremy Singer, the previous School Board president who was introduced in to guide this cycle’s FAFSA launch. “Our programs have been totally examined and are able to go.”

Singer added that the division has ready its assist companies for the launch as effectively, by getting ready detailed steerage for counselors and hiring tons of of latest staffers to employees name facilities. In September, a Authorities Accountability Workplace report discovered that the division had woefully understaffed its helpline in 2023–24, resulting in lengthy maintain instances. About three-quarters of all calls went unanswered on the peak of public frustration with the shape.

Singer added that his group has labored with distributors who present scholar support type processing software program, like Ellucian, to make sure faculties have the capability to start processing kinds and packaging support affords as quickly because the 2025–26 FAFSA is launched. Within the final cycle, processing didn’t begin till greater than three months after the preliminary launch.