WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education is taking a phased approach to opening the application period for federal financial aid for students for the 2025-26 school year, with the department announcing Tuesday that it will partner with a small number of local organizations to participate in the first pilot period, which begins Oct. 1.
The department announced in early August that it would phase in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and address any issues before the application is made available to everyone.
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The form will be open to a few hundred students and contributors during an initial beta testing period this fall, growing to tens of thousands by the final testing phase, and is expected to be available to everyone by December 1st.
Community groups interested in taking part in the initial testing can fill out an interest form starting Tuesday through Sept. 5.
The ministry plans to select two to six organizations from the pool and notify them by September 9th.
“Just to give you some confidence, we've hit all of our milestones so far on schedule,” FAFSA executive adviser Jeremy Singer said in a conference call with reporters about the framework for the FAFSA testing period for the 2025-26 school year. “That bodes well for us that we'll be in time for the beta testing period and then we'll have a solid path forward to actually opening up to live users on Oct. 1.”
“Each (community organization) will be recruiting students to participate in the beta and will host a FAFSA night in early October,” said Singer, who leads FAFSA strategy within the department's Office of Federal Student Aid.
He said the organisations would also identify partner universities that would receive the Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) and the aim was to “test the system end-to-end”.
Singer said the department also plans to partner with high schools and higher education institutions in future beta tests.
The department said in March that FAFSA applications were down about 40% compared to the same period in 2023, but as of Tuesday the difference was less than 3%.
The 2024-25 FAFSA form faced some hiccups both during its soft launch last December and its official debut in January of this year. After the FAFSA Simplification Act was passed in December 2020, the 2024-25 form was revamped.
The department has been working to fix a series of glitches and errors, including concerns from advocates about returns not being adjusted for inflation, miscalculations in formulas and inaccurate tax payment data.