GAO releases preliminary findings from FAFSA investigation

A authorities investigation into final 12 months’s rollout of the brand new Free Utility for Federal Pupil Assist discovered that Training Division officers didn’t correctly check and put together the shape and launched it regardless of indicators that it was not prepared for broad launch—an oversight that proved disastrous.

The division’s missteps are detailed in two paperwork from the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace, launched this morning. GAO officers will give testimony concerning the findings at a Home greater schooling subcommittee listening to immediately.

The division has already delayed the shape’s launch for the 2025–26 software cycle to December as a way to find time for testing, which is about to start subsequent week. GAO officers warned that the following FAFSA is in danger for related delays and technical points due to systemic issues within the division and the Workplace of Federal Pupil Assist, the company that oversees the FAFSA.

A number of the GAO’s findings have been public data for months. Inside Increased Ed chronicled lots of them in a wide-ranging investigation printed in March—together with the truth that FSA didn’t correctly check the brand new kind, perform unbiased critiques of its processing system or repair a slew of technical errors in a well timed method.

However the findings launched this morning, a part of a long-anticipated report, give a primary glimpse into the bureaucratic failures behind the scenes, each throughout the overhaul of the shape itself and within the lead-up to its launch. The report additionally comprises quite a lot of new revelations about FSA’s dealing with of the rollout and officers’ technique for speaking with college students and faculties.

For one, the GAO discovered that as early as August 2022, FSA knew, or at the very least anticipated, that the 2024–25 FAFSA launch must be delayed. That month, the workplace started retooling its schedule for FAFSA processing, shifting deadlines for contractors from October 2023—the shape’s conventional, and on the time anticipated, launch date—to December, but they waited seven months to announce the delay publicly.

The GAO suggests FSA officers might have been getting ready for a chance fairly than an eventuality, however it’s the primary proof that points with the rollout timeline emerged greater than a 12 months earlier than the launch.

Along with planning errors that waylaid the rollout course of, the report discovered that the division’s communication technique—each for serving to faculties perceive the delays and for serving to households navigate the shape—was insufficient.

Of the 5.4 million calls the Training Division’s name middle obtained throughout the first 5 months of the FAFSA rollout, 4 million—or about three-quarters—went unanswered. In response to the report, the division had far fewer staffers working the middle than throughout the prior 12 months and answered practically 200,000 fewer calls throughout the first 5 months of the rollout.

“The decision middle’s failure to satisfy demand grew to become a major bottleneck for college kids and households who struggled to get assist with urgent points,” the report mentioned. “All 4 name middle contractors failed their buyer satisfaction rating throughout the first 5 months of the rollout.”

The report additionally discovered that the division failed to tell greater than 500,000 college students of adjustments to their federal assist estimates that resulted from corrections to calculation errors throughout the software cycle, main college students to depend on “the wrong estimate … to make choices about which school they might afford.”

These recurring errors—what the GAO report calls “unresolved defects”—that persevered nicely after launch are what really vexed struggling households and turned a problematic launch right into a yearlong debacle that broken public belief within the federal assist system.

The GAO’s findings are in step with earlier critiques of the FAFSA launch, which all discovered shortcomings in planning and oversight.

Failures of Foresight

Division officers, together with Training Secretary Miguel Cardona, have typically mentioned Congress is at the very least partly in charge for the FAFSA chaos for refusing to allocate elevated funding to the overhaul challenge. However whereas the GAO report doesn’t dispel the speculation that further sources would have helped keep away from the preliminary launch delay, it attracts a extra direct connection between the division’s errors and the delays and technical glitches that beset the shape all through the applying cycle.

The report’s findings all level again to 1 key misstep: that the FSA moved ahead with the rollout whereas a lot of the underlying processing system’s important capabilities had been unfinished. On the time of the shape’s launch, 18 of the 25 “key necessities” for launch had not been met, together with “the potential to find out remaining assist eligibility and distribute these outcomes to colleges”—that means FSA was conscious they’d probably need to push again processing months sooner than they introduced to high schools. Some monetary assist professionals have mentioned that delay was even extra disruptive than the preliminary launch delay, setting again faculties’ timelines for packaging assist presents and forcing many to increase their dedication deadlines.

In actual fact, the GAO report discovered that faculties weren’t knowledgeable of the delay till the day earlier than processing was supposed to start.

The report is primarily centered on the FSA’s function within the troubled rollout. The company has been on the coronary heart of the fallout: Its chief working officer, Richard Cordray, resigned in April after backlash, and the Training Division is presently conducting an inside assessment of the company.

However the GAO discovered that there’s blame to share throughout different Training Division places of work and leaders. The division’s chief info officer, as an example, “didn’t present efficient oversight” of the FAFSA rollout: The CIO workplace initially rated the challenge a 3, which represented medium danger, however the workplace didn’t assessment that ranking till June 2024—greater than 5 months after the applying launched. The CIO’s workplace advised GAO they didn’t conduct danger assessments for the overhaul as a result of from 2021 to 2024 they had been “revising the division’s associated processes” for assessing danger.

The report urged that top turnover within the CIO workplace is partly in charge for this oversight. Because the FAFSA overhaul started in 2021, there have been six totally different Training Division CIOs, based on the report. A “lack of constant management” is certainly one of many extra systemic, department-level flaws that the GAO warns might undermine this cycle’s FAFSA launch, which has already been pushed again two months.

“Till the division addresses these weaknesses, it is going to be hampered in its capacity to make wanted enhancements to [the FAFSA processing system],” the report concludes. “This might put the 2025–2026 FAFSA cycle at elevated danger for experiencing additional delays and technical errors.”

Can’t Escape the Previous

The existence of the GAO report itself has made headlines this previous 12 months: Congressional Republicans requested for the investigation in January after which accused the division of obstructing the assessment.

Democrats have additionally criticized the Biden administration’s dealing with of the challenge, which was mandated by Congress.

“Regrettably, the implementation of the regulation has been derailed by a collection of avoidable errors made by the Division of Training,” Consultant Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat, mentioned in ready opening remarks forward of Tuesday’s listening to.

Wilson added that she’s been inspired by the division’s progress for the following software cycle and emphasised the significance of getting this 12 months’s rollout proper.

That appears to be the place the division’s focus is, too. The division launched its personal inside report Monday, subtitled “A path ahead for the 2025–26 cycle,” through which they mentioned they had been “dedicated to studying from challenges with [last cycle’s] launch” and outlined plans for testing the shape to make sure it’s “totally purposeful” upon launching.

However the GAO report’s findings are certain to reignite anger over the division’s dealing with of the brand new kind simply as officers try to shift the nationwide dialog towards the long run. A GAO spokesperson advised Inside Increased Ed that the workplace remains to be investigating the rollout and reviewing the FAFSA processing system; they count on to conclude their work by early subsequent 12 months.