Amid troubles with FAFSA rollout, fewer students applied for financial aid

Following a rocky rollout of this year’s FAFSA, roughly 5.7 million students applied for aid nationwide — compared to the average of 17 million applicants, The Hill reported. 

“Because the FAFSA became available so much later than it did in a normal year and there were so many glitches at the beginning of the process that needed to be resolved, some of those folks who would normally file a FAFSA earlier in the process may have decided to set it aside temporarily to wait for all of those things to be resolved and worked out before they come back to complete it,” Karen McCarthy, vice president for public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told the Hill.

She also expressed doubt that the number of applicants will grow and make up for the lags. 

According to The National College Attainment Network (NCAN),  only 1.2 million high school seniors have completed their applications, marking a 34% drop in comparison to the previous FAFSA cycle. 

“We pushed back the starting line for students and families to submit and complete the FAFSA, but the finish line is in the same place, right?” Bill DeBaun, senior director of data and strategic initiatives at NCAN, told The Hill. 

“The fall semester is still going to start at the same time, and so we have a really compressed time frame to connect students with the financial aid that they need to matriculate to a post-secondary institution.” 

The U.S. Department of Education, however, said it is working to maximize student financial aid. 

“Doing what we have done in previous years is not going to be enough this FAFSA cycle to get us the results that we need and to ensure that post-secondary enrollment stays stable or increases,” DeBaun told The Hill.