Education Department Provides Updates on FAFSA Progress
Two updates this week from the Department of Education underscore the ongoing turmoil caused by the delays experienced with the rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
The Department launched the first phase of its beta testing process for the 2025-26 form as planned on October 1. This is the first of four beta testing phases that will occur between now and November 30, with each stage including more and more students to stress test the new form. The official public release of the form is still scheduled December 1.
Throughout the beta testing phase, participating students will be completing their real FAFSA, which can include up to 20 institutions for distribution, so institutions or states may already be receiving small numbers of institutional student information records (ISIRs) in the Federal Tax Information (FTI)-Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG) mailbox.
In addition to the start of beta testing, the Department released new tools for institutions and contributors:
- An updated federal student aid estimator tool;
- Updated resources for workarounds to existing issues contributors may experience when creating a studentaid.gov account; and
- A 2025-26 FAFSA prototype form. (The access code is “prototype2526”)
The Department also announced a delay in the processing of corrections to 2024-25 paper FAFSAs because of newly discovered issues with its vendor. In addition, the processing of paper FAFSAs is taking about a month from the time of submission, which is significantly longer than anticipated. The agency is adding resources to return processing to the standard 7-10 day turnaround time.
For more information, please contact:
Justin Monk