GAO Highlights Significant Leadership and Communications Issues with the FAFSA Rollout

The Department of Education’s rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) received a fresh round of scrutiny this week as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released two reports detailing the myriad mistakes the agency made leading up to the release of the new form.  Specifically, the reports focused on the need for the Department to improve its communications and support around the FAFSA and the need for strong leadership to address the weaknesses in the student aid system.

In conjunction with the new reports, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce held a hearing with the authors of the reports to find out more about the issues that plagued the FAFSA rollout. Both events followed the Department’s release of its own internal investigation of the rollout and its plans to improve as the 2025-26 FAFSA cycle gets underway.

In the hearing, committee members questioned the lead GAO staff who investigated the rollout and authored the reports, and asked for further insight into what went wrong behind the scenes. Of the many problems identified by the GAO, the discussion focused largely on two areas: 1) the impact the delays had on students; and 2) key decisions the Department made that led to these problems.

The witnesses noted that about 432,000 fewer students submitted a FAFSA this year, a 3% reduction overall from last year, but a 9% reduction in submissions from high school seniors and first-time applicants. This decline in submissions was particularly severe among lower-income students, with the largest percentage for independent students coming from those with incomes of $30,000 or less and for dependent students from families with incomes between $30,000 and $48,000.

Witnesses also described the timeline for certain decisions by the Department that led to the cascading errors the public experienced once the FAFSA was finally released. In March 2022, the Department awarded the development contract for the new FAFSA to a third-party contractor. This contract had three major capability requirements and 25 additional functional requirements to meet before the October 1, 2023, deadline. Ultimately, the Department released the FAFSA form 90 days late with only 7 of those 25 requirements in place.

According to the GAO, the Department knew as early as August 2022 that it would likely miss the October 2023 release deadline.  However, the decision to push the release date to December didn’t occur until early 2023, meaning the Department waited roughly 7 months before notifying the public about the need to delay the release of the form.

Once the form was released, the Department identified 55 defects in the system, about half of which did not emerge during pre-launch testing. By March 2024, 35 of those defects were fixed, but 20 remained unresolved, with the majority considered as critical or high severity.

And, if a contributor to the form needed assistance to work through any of these issues, they were unlikely to receive help. During the first five months of the rollout, the Department’s call center was so understaffed that of the 5.4 million calls received, 4 million went unanswered – a 74% failure rate.

While there were a few Democrats who highlighted some of the positive work the Department did to make up the completion gap, neither side of the aisle expressed confidence in the agency’s ability to release the 2025-26 FAFSA form without further delays or technical issues. The GAO plans to release another report detailing more of the problems that plagued the rollout.

The day before the hearing, the Department sent a letter to college and university presidents and other stakeholders with information on the process changes it is implementing to ensure the timely release of the 2025-26 FAFSA on December 1, 2024. The letter was joined by a memo that laid out its plans in more detail, including the two-month beta testing process occurring beginning October 1. However, it is clear that the Department has more work to do to restore public trust in its ability to manage the upcoming FAFSA season.

For more information, please contact:
Justin Monk