College aid officials warn FAFSA mess will delay many grant and loan offers until May

Leaders of the college financial aid system assailed the Education Department over this year’s FAFSA debacle, warning that ongoing delays are extending institutions’ timelines for offering packages that many students’ decisions hinge on.

“If there was a financial aid director or even a college president that delayed financial aid on their campus for up to six months, the professional price that would be paid for that would be pretty steep,” Justin Draeger, head of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The hearing by the GOP-led House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development came one day after Education Department officials disclosed that at least 30% of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms submitted so far this year could contain errors resulting from widespread application glitches or other issues.

Those forms are set to be reprocessed in coming weeks, and many will start being sent to schools by May 1, the agency said.

The federal government can typically turn around FAFSA information within days, but the lags this year have extended for months. Colleges and universities are already well behind schedule due to the botched overhaul of the application process — one that was meant to be easier and in many cases more generous, but has instead landed millions of households and campus officials in bureaucratic limbo.

“It’s not a trivial task to roll this out, but this rollout has been disastrous and, frankly, inexcusable,” Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., said Wednesday.

The hearing signaled growing bipartisan frustrations over the FAFSA chaos, much of it focusing on the Education Department, which Draeger said faced a “crisis of credibility.”

Agency leaders didn’t testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but a spokesperson said Tuesday that officials have identified and fixed errors in the online application system “affecting the accurate processing of large numbers of FAFSA forms.”