FAFSA "fixes" frustrate high school seniors as deadlines loom for college

With orders from Congress to organize the FAFSA form to be more accessible for students and families, delays and other issues with the 2023-2024 FAFSA form have left users frustrated.

The first issue with the 2023-2024 FAFSA form was its severely delayed release. Set to release in October of 2023, the FAFSA form was instead released to students and families on the 31st of December. Many students and families reported that in an attempt to contact FAFSA offices through phone call, they were instead left on hold for hours on end, oftentimes only to be disconnected. Others were unable to reach the office at all.

As of the week of March 13, 2024, the Department of Education found that 70,000 unanswered emails had piled up. Following this discovery, over 200 employees of the Department of Education were left to work day and night to sort through and address the emails. 

Thereafter, the Department of Education made a statement claiming that they would have all forms sent to colleges by March 15, 2024. This would mean these employees would have two days to go through all 6 million of the applications that had been sent in, as well as the 10 million that the offices are expecting to come in.

“Financial aid offices across the country are hanging on by their fingernails at this point,” said chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Justin Draeger.

The FAFSA website itself also had been troubling users as well, with frequent crashes, and with the site not loading at all to begin with.

“In a normal year, students would be sorting through their financial aid offers by now, giving them plenty of time to prepare for the traditional decision day on May 1, when many schools expect commitments. But this is not a normal year,” said Erica L. Green and Zach Montague in their article for the New York Times.  

Fortunately for many college-bound students, many colleges and universities across the nation are acknowledging these delays and issues with FAFSA, and responding by pushing many deadlines back. This allows for students to still have time to sort through financial aid offers from different schools to determine which option works best for them, regardless of all of the delay.