A new review and testimony from investigators with the U.S. Government Accountability Office offer the clearest picture yet of the aid form’s troubled rollout.
New investigations by the U.S. Government Accountability Office offer the fullest picture yet of why the revamped FAFSA had such a troubled launch.
According to the GAO review, the department identified 55 technical “defects” after the FAFSA finally launched, some of which have yet to be resolved as of early September. That’s “about twice as many” defects as FSA had flagged during testing. Some applicants received erroneous messages that their FAFSA application would expire after 40-45 days. This wasn’t fixed until 135 days after launch.
Keeping in mind that people also call for help with lots of other issues, including help navigating student loan confusion, the department projected it would receive a total of 2.2 million phone calls within the first 5 months of the FAFSA rollout. They got more than twice that many.
What’s more, the Education Department didn’t tell applicants about changes to their aid eligibility after it belatedly adjusted its math to account for inflation –According to the GAO, another 500,000 applicants whose aid eligibility changed as the result of other department mistakes likewise received no notice or update.
It’s not uncommon for schools to flag minor changes that must be made to students’ records and, in the past, they could save time by submitting those corrections back to the department automatically, in batches. But, this time around, this batch corrections function wasn’t working.
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