FAFSA delays continue as colleges wait for financial aid data

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Prospective college students are one step closer to financial aid packages this week, but the timeline is still months behind.

This “is definitely one of the stranger years that we’ve had,” says Keith Raab, director of financial aid at Oregon State University.

That’s because, this year, the U.S. Department of Education gave the federal student aid application, or FAFSA, a long-awaited makeover. The goal of the revamp was to simplify the form, and when it works, it is easier to fill out. Unfortunately, the effort has been marked by delays and bugs that have caused confusion in higher education and in high schools – not to mention the millions of students waiting to learn how much money they’ll have for college.

Last week marked the deadline set by the Education Department to send colleges the data from the new form. Once colleges get that data, they can start the process on their end to send out aid offers. In a normal year, this step of the process happens in January.

Schools say they are getting some of the FAFSA applications from the department. But far fewer than they expected – or need – to get aid packages out to students.

“The first day,” Raab says. “We received eight.”

That’s eight individual applications, out of the 90,000 or so that Oregon State expects to process this year. By the end of the week, Raab said, they had received closer to 20, but there’s a long way to go.

“Getting 10 or 20 lets us start to look at them,” he says. “But it doesn’t do much for us.”

Other schools are in the same boat, by the end of last week the University of Michigan had received 18 applications.

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