Education secretary pledges troubled online student aid tool will be ready for next fall

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Senate appropriators on Tuesday that the agency's online student aid form would be ready with improvements for students to begin submitting applications on October 1.

The tool debuted online in late December, in the middle of a busy college application season, but problems with limited uptime and bad data led to user complaints 

"I do share the frustration you share," Cardona said in response to questions from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "Our kids deserve better, and we are working around the clock to make sure it improves. We've had delays. We had issues with some of the coding that we had to make changes to, and it is an overhaul. It's not just a new website."

Cardona steered clear of apologizing for the disappointing rollout, but he did acknowledge the confusion and anxiety experienced by students and by school administrators as a result of the rocky rollout of the online Free Application for Federal Student Aid tool.

Students typically face a May 1 deadline to commit to attending a college or university, but doing so can be problematic without knowing what kind of financial aid package they are in line to receive. The online form was designed to be dynamic to only require applicants to submit answers to necessary questions. The previous iteration of the form included 103 possible questions, but under the revised FAFSA applicants can skip up to 26 questions depending on the information they input. Despite the streamlined format, data shows that students are still facing challenges completing the application. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., called the rollout of the new system "bungled" and said that " FAFSA completions are down 36% nationally compared to this time last year" and down almost 40% in her home state.

Later in the hearing, Cardona noted that the old form also presented challenges, and that he thinks that the digital FAFSA will improve accessibility across the board.

"I think one of the things that we don't really talk about a lot is that across our country we've normalized a 60% completion, 70% completion of FAFSA. It is our expectation as we work together to get those numbers closer to 90%, 95% of students filling it out," Cardona said.