NBC News: Dozens of Colleges See Financial Aid Turmoil Impacting Freshman Class Makeups
The Education Department is assuring schools and students that its financial aid process will be fixed after a botched overhaul led some colleges to say they were seeing decreased enrollments.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he’s “very confident” households will be able to start applying for federal financial aid by Dec. 1, just weeks after officials pushed back the launch date for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by two months to Dec. 1 for the 2025-26 academic year.
We’ve got to do better, and we’re going to do better.
The move aims to buy more time to test the online form with select students and schools after months of glitches and delays roiled the college application process for millions of students this year.
“We’ve got to do better, and we’re going to do better,” Cardona told NBC News this week. Going forward, the application experience is “going to be simpler — 15, 20 minutes,” he promised.
Already, fallout from the months of snags is showing up in enrollments, many higher-education officials say.
About three-quarters of the 384 private institutions that responded to a recent survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said FAFSA issues altered the makeup of incoming freshman classes.
Forty-three percent said their first-year cohort is smaller than the prior one, according to a summary of findings NAICU released from the July leg of the survey, which it plans to continue conducting through September. The 850-school association told NBC News that 18% of respondents reported FAFSA problems have reduced the racial or ethnic diversity of freshman classes, and 27% said they logged fewer financial aid recipients.